Advocate Aurora Health's Wisconsin operations were down around $300 million in April

 Advocate Aurora Health revenue was down around $300 million for its Wisconsin operations in April as the coronavirus pandemic paused non-emergency medicine, President and CEO Jim Skogsbergh said. 

"In a word, it’s been an unmitigated disaster financially, economically," Skogsbergh said during a virtual Greater Milwaukee Committee May membership meeting. "And that’s true of any business that is forced to close or shut down significantly."

Revenues at the largest hospital system in Wisconsin are down around 50%, he said. Meanwhile, there's been increased costs for personal protective equipment and other needs. 

The system, which operates more than two dozen hospitals in Wisconsin and Illinois, has around 700 COVID-19 patients, he said. That number has been about the same for a while, showing that the coronavirus curve is flattening. 

The vast majority of those COVID-19 patients are in Illinois. There are about six coronavirus patients in Advocate Aurora's Illinois hospitals for every one patient in Wisconsin, he said.

Illinois, with one of the largest cities in the country, has more than 79,000 confirmed cases and more than 3,400 deaths from the virus. More than 10,400 cases have been confirmed in Wisconsin with more than 400 deaths. The largest number of COVID-19 patients in Advocate Aurora's Wisconsin hospitals are at St. Luke's, he said. 

"We’re quite anxious to get back to work for obvious reasons," he said. 

The health system was created by the merger of the largest health system in Wisconsin, Aurora Health Care, and the largest in Illinois, Advocate Health Care Network around two years ago. It is one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the country. 

At the beginning of 2020, Skogsbergh had set a goal of increasing the health system's revenue to $27 billion a year and more than doubling its size by 2025. 

Sarah Hauer can be reached at shauer@journalsentinel.com or on Instagram @HauerSarah and Twitter @SarahHauer. Subscribe to her weekly newsletter Be MKE at jsonline.com/bemke.