Changes at Advocate Aurora
Jim Skogsbergh will be Advocate Aurora Health’s sole president and CEO, and Nick Turkal is leaving.
Advocate Aurora Health announced Wednesday that Jim Skogsbergh will be the health system’s sole president and CEO and that Nick Turkal, who had been co-CEO, will leave the organization.
Turkal, a physician, was CEO of Aurora Health Care before its merger with Advocate Health Care Network in April 2018.
“After a thorough review with the assistance of an independent adviser, the board has made the decision to move to a single CEO model to best position us to advance our strategy moving forward,” Joanne Disch, chair of Advocate Aurora’s board, said in a statement.
Skogsbergh and Turkal have been co-CEOs since the merger.
“We absolutely believed it was necessary when we brought Advocate and Aurora together to have a co-CEO model,” Skogsbergh said in an interview. “And I believe that was the right decision.”
But about six months ago, the two acknowledged that having co-CEOs may not be the best structure going forward.
“And we expressed that to the board together for their consideration,” Skogsbergh said.
The board basically was asked to decide which of the two should be CEO.
“Believe me, Nick and I talked about
it amongst ourselves on a number of occasions,” Skogsbergh said. He stressed that Turkal and he had a good relationship.
Advocate Aurora will continue to have its headquarters in Downers Grove, Illinois, and Milwaukee, he said, and has no plans to have one headquarters in Illinois.
“We are going to study this, certainly, and you never say never,” Skogsbergh said.
But he added, “We are equally committed to Wisconsin as we are to Illinois, and that’s going to be evident in a thousand different ways.”
Skogsbergh, 61, joined Advocate Health Care in 2001 as chief operating officer and was promoted to president and CEO in 2002. A graduate of Iowa State University and the University of Iowa, he began his career in hospital administration in 1982 as an administrative resident with Memorial Health System of South Bend, Indiana.
Turkal, a former professor at what is now the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health, was promoted to the top job at Aurora in 2006.
He will help with the transition needed, Advocate Aurora said.
“It has truly been a privilege to work alongside Jim and lead this remarkable organization and its talented and passionate team members,” Turkal said in a statement.
The merger created one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the country, with more than 70,000 employees and operations that run from Bloomington, Illinois, to Marinette, Wisconsin.
Advocate Aurora had $9.2 billion in revenue last year and reported $414 million in operating profit and $72.5 million in net profit, which included investment losses on its reserves.
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