Endeavor Health, including its nine Chicago-area hospitals, announced plans Wednesday to merge under the Rush University System for Health umbrella, according to hospital officials.
For now, little will change for patients, as the proposed merger will go through a regulatory process that could take months to be approved. If approved, the combined health system would include 12 hospitals in Chicago and surrounding suburbs, which could make it one of the largest health systems in the region.
Endeavor Health hospitals include Swedish Hospital, Evanston Hospital, Edward Hospital, Skokie Hospital, Elmhurst Hospital, Glenbrook Hospital, Highland Park Hospital, Linden Oaks Hospital and Northwest Community Hospital. Under the proposed merger, the hospitals would continue to operate but under the Rush brand.
Dr. Omar Lateef, president and CEO of Rush University System for Health and Rush University Medical Center, said the goal is to improve patient access and opportunities for its workforce. The proposed combined system would include its current hospitals – Rush University Medical Center, Rush Copley Medical Center and Rush Oak Park Hospital.
“If you need a clinical trial, this should pave the way for clinical trials,” Lateef said. “If you need access to a higher level or a more local type of care, you can get it where you are. The goal is to improve access, provide the highest quality care and expand it to all of our sites and make it easy for any patient who is in that site to go to another site.”
If the merger goes through, Lateef will assume the role of CEO emeritus and serve as a strategic advisor while JP Gallagher, the current leader of Endeavor Health, will become president and CEO of the new combined health system, according to a press release.
The merger between two of the Chicago area’s largest hospital systems would create a more than $10 billion giant and comes as Endeavor is barely recovering from a financial loss, records show.
Endeavor had about $6.4 billion on hand in 2025, but lost about $34 million that year and nearly $500 million the year before, mostly due to legal settlements, records show. So far this year, Endeavor appears to be bucking the trend.
Rush had approximately $4.4 billion in revenue in 2026. Both are nonprofit organizations.
The proposed combined system is part of a broader trend of consolidation occurring in hospital markets across the country, said Zachary Levinson, director of the KFF Hospital Cost Project. KFF is a nonprofit health policy research, polling and news organization.
Mergers can help hospitals operate more efficiently and help those that are struggling financially keep their doors open, Levinson said. But it could also increase costs for patients.
“Mergers often reduce competition, which could allow hospitals to charge more for care,” Levinson said. “Looking at the research, there is now a significant body of evidence demonstrating that consolidation has led to higher prices without obvious effects on quality. »
Hospital consolidation is likely to continue in response to reductions in federal health care spending, Levinson said.
Gallagher said the economic pressures facing health care did not directly lead to the merger, but he wanted to ensure Endeavor’s institutions continue to serve their workforce and community for decades to come.
“It’s kind of a long-term bet to be able to not only resist some of these pressures, but frankly, be strong and do some things differently that allow us to improve what that care and experience looks like, even in light of the environment,” Gallagher said.
The merger will come with a $1 billion investment from Endeavor’s endowment that will fund community programs, innovation and research and academics within the combined system, Gallagher and Lateef said.
“We know there is a massive shortage of health care providers in this country right now,” Lateef said. “There’s not enough nurses, there’s not enough doctors, there’s not enough ultrasound technicians. We have a health sciences college and we’re committed to increasing our current workforce, and we’re going to take that money and help grow our existing programs.”
The investment will also be used for research efforts focusing on health equity and neuroscience, Lateef said. Other funds will be used for Rush programs aimed at closing the life expectancy gap in Chicago.
Bringing together different work cultures is one of the biggest risks of mergers, said Lynne Barnes, a clinical professor and program director for the master’s in health administration at the University of Illinois. But Barnes said she saw an exciting opportunity to connect the academic side of Rush’s work with the services provided at Endeavor’s facilities.
“The challenges for leaders will be fun: tying these two systems together and bringing out the best in each of them in the other,” Barnes said. “There are a lot of opportunities in this merger.”
Mergers are bound to bring change, and Barnes said it’s important for leaders to make employees feel included in well-planned and communicated changes. Otherwise, leaders risk frustrating their employees, she said.
The announcement comes as nurses at Rush and Endeavor have separately in recent months gone public with their efforts to unionize their workplaces, many citing concerns about nurse-patient ratios. Just this week, nurses at Edward Hospital in Naperville announced they had filed a petition to hold an election, a step toward unionizing under the National Nurses Organizing Committee.
Nurses at Rush University Medical Center voted earlier this year to form a union under the same umbrella, which is affiliated with the larger National Nurses United.
In a statement, Brenda Langford, a nurse at Stroger Hospital and a board member of the National Nurses Organizing Committee, said nurses fear the mergers will lead to cuts to hospital services and increase the cost of health care.
“Nurses are calling on state and federal regulators to block any merger that does not ensure all services are protected and nurses are demanding that we have a say in the future of any merged health system. We know what happens when the state does not act,” Langford said in the release, adding that other recent hospital consolidations have led to cuts in some medical services.
Endeavor Hospitals Nurses in Evanston, Skokie, Glenbrook and Highland Park also organized under another union, Teamsters Local 743. In a statement, the union said the proposed merger highlights why nurses need representation.
“During mergers and other workplace changes, workers must be protected and have a say in decisions that affect them, because they are the ones who make these health care systems successful,” the Teamsters said in the statement.
Lateef said the merger will provide more opportunities for nurses.
“Endeavor nurses are essential to our mission; they are essential to our identity and are an essential part of everything we do,” Gallagher said. “We’ve been very actively engaged, listening and meeting with our nurses and understanding what’s important to them. And we’ve made some very significant investments and will continue to do so as part of our short-term and long-term future.”
WBEZ’s Kristen Schorsch contributed.
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