Warm Water Works

swimming pool

We are all only one moment away
from losing our physical independence.

Warm Water Works is a community grass-roots advocacy and support group formed in response to a 2008 pool closing plan. Instead Warm Water Works volunteers provided professional marketing assistance, analyzed and provided guidance, and raised monies from bake sales, brat fries, scrip card programs, and searched out donors to bridge the $3 million dollar shortfall needed to match Marathon County's pledge of $3 million to fund a new pool. The group has continued to actively meet since 2008. Current fundraising helps support scholarships for those in need, covers marketing expenses for education and outreach to referring physicians and purchasing specialized pool equipment.

The new Aquatic Therapy Center is NOW OPEN!
Take a Virtual Tour!

Why did our Community raise funds for a new therapeutic pool to be built?

  • The current pool facility has served the community well, but has in time, outlived its design and is facing structural, mechanical and operation issues.
  • The Marathon County Board offered to commit $3 million toward a $6 million capital project to rebuild the Warm Water Therapeutic Pool if our community could raised the remainder of the funds to support the project. We succeeded and construction began in the Summer of of 2019.
  • Over the next 30 years, the new pool will have the potential to impact at least 40,000 to 50,000 people directly, making the new facility self-sustaining and an available health care resource for our community.

Since opening to the community in 1977, the North Central Health Care Warm Water Therapeutic Pool has served people who live each day seeking to improve their quality of life through therapies that are unique to the Central Wisconsin area.

You can view the August 2019 groundbreaking ceremony for the new Warm Water Therapeutic Pool online. (Link to Video)

Who Uses the Pool?

Over 1,400 pool users, from babies and children to adults and seniors make over 25,000 visits per year to the Pool. Watch our Patient Experience Videos and learn about the amazing progress and success these pool users were able to make. In this 90-92 degree warm-water environment, individuals of all ages receive recovery treatment and care for a wide variety of ailments.

  • Fibromyalgia
  • Arthritis
  • Chronic Pain
  • Injuries
  • Neurological & Brain Injuries/Disorders
  • Muscular Dystrophy
  • Cerebral Palsy
  • Parkinson’s Disease
  • Multiple Sclerosis
  • Joint Replacements
  • Addiction Therapy

Currently over 200 local physicians regularly refer patients for therapy. With the opioid crisis our community is facing, the pool has become a way for physicians to avoid prescribing addictive pain medication. More and more physicians are prescribing warm water therapy.

There are no other warm water therapy pool options within a 150 mile radius of the Wausau area.

Up to 67% of pool users receive financial reimbursement from Medicare or Medicaid and the pool is heavily used by seniors and low income residents, our most vulnerable population in Marathon County.

Warm Water Therapy…

  • will allow miracles to continue for people who rely on the services the pool provides.
  • will allow children, adults and seniors to live independently and have the opportunity to heal, recover and live with reduced pain.
  • will allow those with unexpected injuries have a chance to use recovery methods that yield results that have been unattainable by traditional land therapy.
  • will allow those in recovery to heal without the aide of addictive opioid pain medications.

…Will Provide Hope.

If you would like to make a non-monetary donation to support services at North Central Health Care and the people who use them, please visit our Donate or Volunteer Services pages.

Be sure to follow NCHC Aquatic Therapy Center on Facebook at
NCHCWarmWaterWorks
https://www.facebook.com/NCHCWarmWaterWorks