A new model of health-care delivery is coming to communities and community hospitals across northern Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin.

More than 160 physicians from 40 clinics and representing nearly 20 fields of medicine are creating the region's largest, most comprehensive health network of independently operated clinics.

Integrity Health Network, LLC (IHN) represents a merger of Northstar Physicians Network and Northland Medical Associates, organizations founded more than 25 years ago and headquartered in Duluth. The new network aligns the primary care and specialty clinics of Northstar Physicians Network with the specialty clinics of Northland Medical Associates -- each independently operated by the physicians who serve in them.

"With recent passage of a national healthcare reform bill, patients are overwhelmed with news concerning change and uncertainty in the future of healthcare delivery," IHN CEO Jeffrey Tucker (right) said. "Integrity Health Network stands as one of the few models in the country of the kind of care that generations of Americans have preferred: physician-led."

"What IHN is doing is exactly what this new legislation wants and many other networks have yet to do: offer benchmarks based on outcomes, efficiency and effectiveness," said William DeMarco, CEO of Pendulum HealthCare Development Corporation.

Northstar Physicians and Northland Medical have always fostered a higher quality of care in the communities they serve. Now, for the first time, IHN is developing a vastly improved continuum of patient care from the primary care physician to the specialist to community hospitals. The network currently works with hospitals in Cloquet, Virginia, Crosby, Little Falls, Brainerd, Baxter, St. Cloud, Hayward and Ashland.

The concept is based on a ground-breaking care model that results in driving healthcare costs down. It focuses on providing the right level of care at the right time and at the right place.

"By joining forces, we create the support system necessary to ensure that independent clinics and community hospitals not only survive in this era of big-corporate, system care but thrive," said Glenn Nordehn, DO and Chief Medical Officer, Northstar Physicians Network.

IHN providers want to be independent of corporate systems, because they are committed to delivering care that is physician-driven and patient-inspired.

"We are set apart from other networks by the fact our board is almost entirely comprised of physicians, the people closest to the patient," said Nordehn. "So the quality of care takes precedence in our board's decision making, not the quality of our bottom line. This will not change despite our growth."

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Robert Bly, one of the most important and influential contemporary American poets, will present his work at Minnesota Duluth on May 4 at 7 p.m. The program is free and open to the public.

Bly is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking book, Iron John: A Book about Men (1990), which was on the New York Times best-seller list for more than a year. However, since his first widely-acclaimed book of poetry, Silence in the Snowy Fields (1962), he has been revered by readers around the world.

As a poet, translator, and editor, Bly is responsible for more than a hundred books. He won the National Book Award in 1967 for The Light Around the Body, contributing his prize money to American Writers Against the Vietnam War, a group that he co-founded in 1966. Throughout his career, he has combined the personal and the public, championing both the individual spiritual journey inward and the moral obligations and opportunities people have as participants in society.

Ray Gonzales, writing in the Bloomsbury Review, said, "Someday, the record will show that the four giants of 20th-century poetry in the U.S. were Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, and Robert Bly. Without Bly, modern American poetry would be unrecognizable in its current form."

Bly was born in 1926 in western Minnesota and grew up on a family farm. His work is grounded in the north, in the woods and fields, and in the people. He currently lives in Minneapolis and Moose Lake.

This project was funded with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008, which dedicated funding to preserve Minnesota's arts and cultural heritage.