Press Release

MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Hospital Association Information Center (WHAIC) released today its annual Guide to Wisconsin Hospitals for FY2024. Wisconsin hospitals and health systems showed slight financial improvement after facing significant challenges in recent years. The 2024 report shows operating margins improving slightly across both hospitals and health systems compared to 2023.

Key Findings

• While Wisconsin health system margins rebounded slightly to 2.2% in 2024 from -0.8% in 2023, margins remain far below pre-COVID health system margins. 
• For 2024, 60 hospitals reported lower operating margins than in 2023. Forty-one hospitals, approximately 24% of all hospitals in the state, operated at a loss. 
• In 2024, 17 of Wisconsin’s 80 safety net hospitals experienced a loss (negative total margin). 
• Hospitals continue to deal with rising costs. Supply and service costs have increased by 11% since FY2022, while salary and fringe expenses – largely driven by workforce shortages – have increased by 10%.
• Emergency department utilization has also increased, with over 2.4 million visits in 2024, a 5.4% increase from 2022.  

Read the Guide to Wisconsin Hospitals for FY2024. ABOUT THE WISCONSIN HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION INFORMATION CENTER, LLC
The WHA Information Center is dedicated to collecting, analyzing and disseminating complete, accurate and timely data and reports about charges, utilization, quality and efficiency provided by Wisconsin hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers and other health care providers. Since 2003, the vision of WHAIC has been to help health care stakeholders in Wisconsin turn data into actionable insights that enable timely and reliable decision-making. WHAIC has a strong heritage of meeting the ever-changing, broad-based needs of health care stakeholders statewide. WHAIC remains self-supporting and is committed to serving our customers at low or no cost and maximizing the value and improvement that can be realized from health care data.