NEW ULM – A documentary featuring Hearts Beat Back: the Heart of New Ulm (HONU) is now publicly available online at populationhealthimpact.org.

The 20 minute documentary “The Story of New Ulm a Population Health Transformation” made by Ethan Vincent and Nathaniel Hansen was created for Health Catalyst’s annual summit in Salt Lake City, Utah.

“They [Health Catalyst] were really intrigued by how we are using data to help inform our strategies to work on improving health and healthcare for all the patients in the communities we serve,” New Ulm Medical Center President Toby Freier said.

Health Catalyst is a partner with the Allina Health system. It runs the “data warehouse” where Allina doctors can interpret that data, Freier said.

The documentary came about when Freier was asked to be the keynote speaker at the summit. He agreed and they made a documentary to go along with it.

The documentary crew spent eight days in New Ulm collecting 45 hours of film, before cutting it down to the 20 minute video shown at the summit, Freier said.

There will also be a series of shorter videos made to go along with the documentary, also on the website.

HONU attracted Health Catalyst because of the innovation in data analysis and community engagement involved in the project, Freier said.

“We have done so much to partner across the community and this is more than the healthcare system, this truly is the community,” Freier said. “From the chamber, to the city, to the county, to public health, to the school district, to our businesses, to individuals, to families, everybody rallying together and saying ‘let’s make health a shared goal for all.'”

The website is a national launch for the video to attract attention to the community-driven healthcare approach that is HONU.

“Everybody feels this is where the country needs to go, where a community says ‘hey we can do this, we can change the health of our community, we can improve the health of our community,’ and I am just thankful the support we have here, it is second to none,” Freier said.

Freier argued that this is a proud moment for New Ulm.

“I think for our community, what I hope is that people get a sense of pride of all that we accomplished,” Freier said. “So that there is some opportunity here to take a step back and celebrate and recognize where we came from seven or eight years ago and where we are today and recognize that great work.”

But he warned that this is not the time for New Ulm to rest on its laurels, instead it is important to keep making progress.