Advocate Aurora Health merger complete
In an email sent to employees this morning, hospital CEOs told Downers Grove-based Advocate Health Care and Aurora Health Care, the largest health organization in Wisconsin, that they are now known as Advocate Aurora Health.
The email was sent to 70,000 employees after the deal closed April 1, creating the 10th largest nonprofit health system in the U.S.
Jim Skogsbergh, president and chief executive officer of Advocate, was named co-CEO of Advocate Aurora Health.
Expecting to serve nearly 3 million patients a year, the two organizations say the merger will enhance scale, expand access and improve efficiency.
"Our merger represents a tremendous opportunity to elevate the strengths of two great organizations to shape a better future for those we serve," said Dr. Nick Turkal, president and chief executive officer of Aurora, also named co-CEO of Advocate Aurora Health.
Advocate Aurora Health will operate more than 500 sites of care and 27 hospitals. It will employ more than 3,300 physicians and nearly 70,000 associates and caregivers. With combined annual revenues of about $11 billion, the new organization offers significant resources and the financial flexibility to expand investment and scale innovation.
The announcement comes about a year after Advocate ended a nearly two-year battle to merge with Northshore University HealthSystem.
The Federal Trade Commission argued that consumers could face rising health care costs, while the system would have less incentive to upgrade services and improve quality.
That merger would have created an organization composed of 16 hospitals with about 45,000 employees serving more than 3 million patients annually, making it the 11th largest nonprofit health care system in the U.S. The combined organizations' board of directors was to be made up of an equal number of members from both Advocate and Northshore, and the organizations were consolidating financial statements.
A similar deal is planned with the current proposal, except the merger is taking place over state lines. Advocate officials had said this deal is more promising because the two health care systems have contiguous but not overlapping geography, which is how the federal government defined the Advocate and NorthShore markets.