Laid off from Hospital Sisters Health System.

What Hospital Sisters Health System layoffs have meant for employees

The western Wisconsin exit took whole hospitals. HSHS's Sacred Heart WARN letter said all 820 employees there would be affected and listed them by title, from 256 under the registered nurse title to cooks, switchboard operators and two power plant operators, and it said the company "does not have a job bumping system." HSHS's January 22 release said everyone affected would get transition help, including the potential to seek positions elsewhere in HSHS or Prevea. The release worded that last part conditionally, positions "if available," so it described a chance to apply.

The dates in the record didn't all agree. HSHS's Sacred Heart letter, filed the same day as the release, set the hospital's closing for March 22 or within 14 days after, while the public plan had Sacred Heart closing on April 21 until HSHS moved it up to match St. Joseph's, as Civic Media recounted on the day both closed. For Sacred Heart's staff, the state notice carried the earlier date all along. One site went sooner still. The L.E. Phillips Libertas Center, a substance abuse treatment center in Chippewa Falls, closed 11 days after the announcement, according to a Chippewa Herald report that Wisconsin Public Radio cited, while Eau Claire's city attorney raised, in a letter to HSHS and Prevea, reports that some employees had already been terminated.

Not everyone who lost work in the Chippewa Valley worked for HSHS. Prevea Health, the physician network that set out with HSHS in 2015 to build an integrated model there, was closing its own Chippewa Valley locations in the same exit. Its last day of patient care was set for on or before April 21, 2024, with residency clinics expected to run through June 30, and HSHS's release counted 325 Prevea colleagues and physicians apart from its own. HSHS's March 2024 statement about severance spoke of "HSHS impacted colleagues," so if you worked for Prevea, it didn't address your terms.

Several of HSHS's Illinois changes handed work to another organization. Streator's St. Mary's Hospital became part of OSF Healthcare in 2016, and OSF had hired most of its staff by the day it closed, AP reported in a story WCBU carried. Illinois's April 2022 WARN report lists outsourcing as the reason for HSHS Medical Group's Springfield layoffs, and in 2025 HSHS outsourced its revenue cycle to Ensemble Health Partners, whose payroll the colleagues in that work were to join, a spokesperson told Becker’s. If your job is one that moves to a new employer this way, a saved copy of your last HSHS pay stub and benefits summary gives you a baseline to hold the new offer against.

The 2020 cut followed months in which HSHS saw a significant drop in patients and answered with furloughs and executive pay reductions, and the furloughs didn't end the same way for everyone. In the August statement that NPR Illinois ran, HSHS said it was inviting most furloughed colleagues back as patients returned but couldn't bring back all of them, and that the reductions it announced fell mostly on non-clinical staff. If you hold a non-clinical job at HSHS, that's the group the 2020 statement said carried most of that cut.

During the closings, the West Central Wisconsin Workforce Development Board planned a community job fair focused on health care, Wisconsin Public Radio reported, and the governor said he was confident in local and state efforts to help laid-off workers find new jobs. If your HSHS job was in Wisconsin or Illinois, how Wisconsin handles unemployment and Illinois's unemployment rules set out each state's claim steps.

A sourced history of Hospital Sisters Health System layoffs

• February 2025, revenue cycle partnership with Ensemble

  HSHS chose Ensemble Health Partners for an end-to-end revenue cycle partnership, and about 700 HSHS employees were set to become Ensemble employees, a health system spokesperson told Becker’s.

• January 2024, western Wisconsin exit and two hospital closings

  The closings of Sacred Heart in Eau Claire, St. Joseph's in Chippewa Falls and Prevea Health's Chippewa Valley locations affected about 1,082 HSHS and 325 Prevea colleagues and physicians, HSHS said in its January 22 release. Both hospitals closed on March 22, 2024, as Civic Media reported that day.

• June 2022, Decatur Ambulance Service layoff notice

  HSHS St. Mary's Hospital gave notice of 73 permanent layoffs at its Decatur Ambulance Service from September 1, 2022, and Illinois’s June 2022 report marks the workers as unionized, with no bumping rights.

• April 2022, HSHS Medical Group outsourcing layoffs in Springfield

  HSHS Medical Group gave notice of 81 permanent layoffs in Springfield from May 30, 2022, and Illinois’s April 2022 report gives outsourcing as the cause.

• August 2020, pandemic layoffs across Illinois and Wisconsin

  After furloughs and executive pay reductions earlier in 2020, HSHS said it couldn't bring back all its furloughed colleagues and would cut about 10% of its Illinois and Wisconsin workforce, mostly non-clinical, in a statement NPR Illinois published.

• January 2016, Streator's St. Mary's Hospital closing

  St. Mary's Hospital in Streator shut its inpatient services and became part of OSF Healthcare, which had hired 65 percent of its employees, according to AP's story on WCBU. HSHS had sought the closing over declining patient admissions.

What to do if you're laid off from Hospital Sisters Health System

• File for unemployment in the state where you worked. Benefits run from your filing date, and severance usually doesn't block you. Hospital Sisters Health System's biggest hubs: Wisconsin, Illinois. Somewhere else? Every state is here.
• Apply for financial and hardship assistance. Unemployment supplements income, but food benefits, health coverage and utility help are often available as well. Here's some of what Hospital Sisters Health System's hub states run: Wisconsin, Illinois, and every other state is here.
• Mind the health insurance window. Losing coverage opens a 60-day special enrollment period, and an ACA plan usually beats unsubsidized COBRA. Compare your options before the employer coverage lapses, and read how the COBRA clocks run if you are weighing it seriously.
• Get your real runway number. Severance plus savings divided by reality. The calculator takes five minutes.
• Know which clocks are already running. Severance review windows, COBRA election, visa grace periods, and 401(k) rollovers all run on federal deadlines that started at termination. All five deadlines are here.