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Avera Annual Report 2024

Avera looks back at 2024 with gratitude for the many opportunities we’ve had to live out our gospel values of Compassion, Hospitality and Stewardship.

HospitalityAs part of our value of Hospitality, Avera strives to optimize our employees’ talents, creating an environment of healing.
CompassionThrough our Compassion value, Avera wants to advance care delivery and meet persons where they are — focused on quality, respect and affordability.
StewardshipWith Stewardship, Avera strengthens our spiritual, human, financial and physical resources in response to the changing health care landscape.

Guided by Our Mission

Avera Health is distinguished by our faith-based health ministry and the quality of our 22,100 physicians and employees. With the compassion for which Avera is known, we deliver quality care through medical expertise and state-of-the-art technology. Through integration of services and innovative access points, we’re changing how health care is delivered.

Avera is a regional health system comprised of 315 locations in 100 communities in five states across the Upper Midwest. Avera serves a population of 1 million throughout a geographical footprint of 72,000 square miles. Avera is the health ministry of the Benedictine Sisters of Yankton, SD, and the Presentation Sisters of Aberdeen, SD. As a health ministry rooted in the gospel, Avera’s mission is to make a positive impact in the lives and health of persons and communities by providing quality services guided by Christian values.

More About Avera
Jim Dover

A Message from Our CEO

Welcome to Avera’s 2024 Annual Report. Thank you for your interest in our health ministry.

This past year was a memorable one for me as it marked my first year as Avera’s President and CEO. I’ve learned many things, most importantly that the people of Avera are what make it a very special organization, and one that touches many lives.

Keep reading to discover highlights and achievements from the past year. For example, we announced our largest building project in the history of Avera, adding 350,000 square feet of patient care space in Sioux Falls to stay in step with the demands of a growing population.

This was a bold step, yet one that was met with the support of our community. We already have expert teams in place; this project will provide the state-of-the-art space to expand and enhance Avera services including women’s and children’s health, digestive health, orthopedics and more. We are excited for the many ways this new space will accommodate high quality and compassionate care for generations to come.

Our organization continues to gain momentum. Avera has a bright future as we continue expanding and enhancing this ministry to meet the needs that are before us, now and in the future.

Sincerely,
Jim Dover, FACHE
Avera President and CEO

Hospitality

As part of our value of Hospitality, Avera strives to recruit and retain an engaged workforce to care for our employees. We know if we take care of our employees, they offer great care to our patients.

Technology to Support Workforce

Virtual care is a solution to various challenges in health care, including workforce. Virtual solutions are being launched throughout the health system. For example

  • A virtual nursing program completes some nursing functions virtually, allowing nurses more time to spend at the bedside with their patients.
  • A virtual sitting program monitors patients who are at risk for falling.
  • Home monitoring programs assist patients with certain conditions such as congestive heart failure.

Avera uses telemedicine services throughout its hospitals and long-term care centers. These services give local teams an extra set of eyes and ears, as well as consultation, in a number of areas such as emergency and ICU. Care teams feel supported with a wealth of experience and expertise when they are presented with a complex or life-threatening case.

Celebrating Our Employees

Celebrating YOU Week at Avera captures several health care professional observances, yet goes beyond to include the bigger picture and help each and every employee feel celebrated and appreciated.

Future Health Care Workforce

To build health sciences and future workforce, Avera made a generous gift to South Dakota State University of its property at 33rd Street and Minnesota Avenue to provide a home for Sioux Falls-based programs in nursing and pharmacy.

From Arizona to Aberdeen

Health care careers are all about moments. Some are life-changing, but most are small gestures. An acute care nurse who found her way to Avera is known for doing the little things that make a big impact.

Rural Diabetes Care

Avera is collaborating with Mount Marty University to expand access to rural diabetes care with a new graduate Certificate in Endocrinology for nurse practitioners. It’s one of two in the United States and the only one offered in the Midwest.

Health Care Careers

Help deliver superior health care or provide outstanding support for those who do at Avera. Search Careers

Compassion

Through our Compassion value, Avera wants to optimize care delivery and meet persons where they are — focused on quality, respect and affordability — creating an exceptional experience. We design systems of care that enhance the guest experience, and to engage and leverage clinical professionals in care design and delivery.

Caring for our Rural Footprint

An aerial view of Avera’s 72,000-square-mile footprint across South Dakota and four surrounding states might illustrate it best: only 0.1% of that vast space, or around 73 square miles, is urban. Rural is in our DNA. It’s core to who we are and our mission. When the Sisters came to Dakota Territory in the 1880s, they came on a mission of education. Yet when faced with immense health care needs of the day, they began opening hospitals on the rural landscape of the Upper Midwest.

Sioux Falls is an urban referral setting for health care, yet Avera is also comprised of locations in 100 communities that are important in the care we provide. Avera leverages its community and rural locations to deliver quality care, closer to home.

Charity Care and Community Benefit

As a health care ministry, Avera provides care to all who come to us, regardless of their ability to pay. Avera’s mission involves making a positive impact upon the communities we serve, often accomplished through the generosity of our friends and neighbors through Avera Foundation and providing community benefits, such as:

  • Community health services and screenings
  • Health professions education
  • Subsidized services, including Careflight, emergency services, hospice care, transplant and more
  • Research
  • Financial and in-kind contributions
  • Community-building activities
  • Assistance for travel, prescriptions and housing for those who need support outside of their local facilities

By the Numbers

$57,466,537*
 Charity care/financial assistance

$48,038,679
 Unpaid costs of government programs

$103,706,043
 Additional community benefits

$209,211,259
 Total

*This figure includes several years’ charity previously reported as bad debt but now presumptive charity under Avera’s adjusted charity policy.

Moms and Babies

Avera Research Institute has been awarded federal grant funding that will total up to $58 million over seven years to conduct research to benefit the health of mothers and children, especially those in American Indian and rural communities.

Behavioral Health Expansion

To meet ongoing and increasing demand for high quality behavioral health services, Avera is expanding access to inpatient care at two locations, in Sioux Falls and Aberdeen, SD. Support through Avera Foundation by our benefactors made these projects possible.

Assisting Victims

Avera Health received federal grant funding of $950,000 to enhance the availability of trained sexual assault nurse examiners (SANEs) for victims of interpersonal violence.

Enhanced Cancer Care

A new Avera Cancer Institute site in Yankton will offer comprehensive oncology services in one location, with renovation of the Avera Surgical Hospital on the Avera Fox Run Health Campus.

Avera Foundation

Last year, Avera Foundation set a new annual fundraising record with a total of $53 million. In the past year, 20,848 benefactors gave a total of 93,950 gifts, investing into the lives of our patients, their families, our talented caregivers, and initiatives that truly took our quality of care to new heights. Every single dollar from every benefactor made a difference — helping to earn us the title of “High Performer” from the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy. This distinction represents the top 25% of hospital and health system foundations in fundraising returns.

We’re grateful for the outpouring of support we received over the past year, and we look forward to what we’ll accomplish together in the future.

Foundation by the Numbers

2024 Foundation By the Numbers infographic

Dzenan Berberovic, Chief Philanthropy Office

Please accept our heartfelt thanks for the extraordinary moments you make possible.

In every moment of healing and care, there is a deeper story – a story of generosity and kindness.

Your support means the world to us, and through your kindness, you are creating a brighter future for those who depend on us. This Annual Report is a heartfelt expression of our gratitude – a chronicle of the lives touched and a celebration of the difference you make. Because of you, we are here now and far into the future. Thank you for being part of this extraordinary journey. You are making a difference in the lives of those we serve.

Dzenan Berberovic, Avera Chief Philanthropy Officer

Support Avera

Dr. Bruce Brouce and Family

Improving the Health and Well-Being of Children

Bruce R. Prouse, MD, was a kind and compassionate soul. He was deeply committed to his work in pathology and passionate about improving the health and well-being of children and families at Avera. A champion of our ministry, he embodied our core values every day of his life — both at work and at home.

When Dr. Prouse passed away unexpectedly last year, his family chose to honor his memory and create a legacy with an endowed fund in his name. The Bruce R. Prouse, MD Endowment provides support for patients, programming and services at Avera Children’s Hospital, making an impact in perpetuity. The endowment will help connect families with life-changing pediatric care close to home, and it is also a way for Dr. Prouse’s loving wife and daughters to feel his presence and carry on his meaningful work.

A Place for Memories to Live

After the heartbreaking loss of their daughter, Haven Marie, in August 2019 at 24 weeks, Erin and Rodney Yost created a memory box to hold reminders of her. What started as a private keepsake soon blossomed into an effort to support other families grieving the loss of their own infants.

Family and friends quickly came together to support the Yosts and help advance their mission to comfort others within the community. Just a few years later, they hosted Holes for Haven, a golf tournament to benefit the creation of more memory boxes.

And late last year, the project grew again. Teri Jacobs, Brandon Jacobs, Erin Yost and Rodney Yost established the Haven Marie Endowment to provide support for infant loss services at Avera Queen of Peace Hospital in Mitchell, SD, and other facilities in the region.

Holes for Haven golf fundraiser.

Avera Cancer Institute Mitchell employees wearing Avera Cares tshirts.

Avera Cares

Avera employees demonstrate care and compassion in their daily work. Yet every year they also demonstrate their caring spirit through the Avera Cares employee giving campaign. In 2024, 8,348 Avera colleagues provided more than $7.5 million to help patients and coworkers with critical needs, medical assistance, equipment and projects across the Avera ministry.

We accomplish so much when we come together and work as one. Our Avera Cares Campaign makes a difference because of the incredible donations from those people who believe in Avera the most: our employees.

Stewardship

Stewardship involves thoughtful and careful use of our spiritual, human, financial and physical resources in response to the changing health care landscape. We want to make the most of the resources entrusted to us through growth as well as increased efficiencies.

Largest Project in Avera History

Work has begun on the largest building project in Avera’s history, including a six-story tower addition to Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center. Combined with another major building project at the Avera on Louise Health Campus, this will be the largest building project in Avera’s and Sioux Falls’ history at a total cost of $245 million and 350,000 square feet of additional patient care space.

The tower will create a new front door for Avera McKennan as well as a focused area for women’s and children’s hospital services, in conjunction with Avera Foundation’s largest fundraising effort and community generosity. Adding a total of 158 beds, the project will accommodate current and future growth of Sioux Falls and increased demand for medical services.

At the Avera on Louise Health Campus, Avera is constructing a three-story, 127,000-square-foot building for digestive health and other specialties. Space in the Avera Specialty Hospital vacated by digestive health will be converted to space for Avera’s growing orthopedic services.

Read More:

Avera Announces Largest Building Project in its History
Avera Breaks Ground on Medical Building at Avera on Louise

Artist rendering of six-story tower addition to Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center, Sioux Falls, SD.

Enhanced Cancer Care in Yankton

Avera is developing a new Avera Cancer Institute site in Yankton that will offer comprehensive oncology services in one location through a $16 million renovation at the Avera Surgical Hospital, located on the Avera Fox Run Health Campus.

When completed, the Avera Cancer Institute will offer medical oncology, radiation oncology, chemotherapy infusion, clinical research, genetic counseling and other support services.

“We are excited to bring hope and comfort to those living with a cancer diagnosis by creating a new home for comprehensive cancer services in Yankton,” said Doug Ekeren, Regional President and CEO of Avera Sacred Heart Hospital. “Along with our providers and staff, this one-stop facility for oncology services will streamline the patient experience and offer the highest quality cancer care right here in Yankton.”

Artist rendering of Avera Cancer Institute, Yankton, SD.

Avera Continuum of Care

Clinics

200 Primary and Specialty Clinics

  • 60+ medical specialties
  • 1,330 physicians and advanced practice providers

Hospitals

37 Hospitals

  • Tertiary hospital: Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center
    36 Community and Critical Access Hospitals
  • 1,680 beds

Senior Living

Senior Living, Assisted Living and Long-Term Care Locations

  • 1,876 long-term care and assisted living beds
  • 247 apartments

Avera@Home and Home Medical Equipment

Avera@Home Home Care, Hospice and Home Medical Equipment

  • 28 locations
  • 2,196 average patient census

Telemedicine

Telemedicine

  • Virtual visits in primary care and numerous specialties
  • Emergency, critical care, pharmacy and more

Insurance Division

Avera Insurance Division

  • Avera Health Plans covers 70,695 lives

2024 by the Numbers

  • 43,342inpatient discharges
  • 1,203,051outpatient visits
  • 1,990,071clinic visits
  • 3,236,464total patient visits

Avera by the Numbers

  • 315locations
  • 100+communities
  • 5states
  • 72,000square mile footprint
  • 22,100employees
  • 2,200volunteers

Quality

Every two years, Avera’s Quality team develops a system-wide Quality Plan. The Quality Plan brings together the Avera mission with the Avera Strategic Plan and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) National Quality Strategy with the goal of benefiting patients with higher quality, safer and more affordable care.

Notable Awards

Avera hospitals are recognized for exceptional care and commitment to patients.

  • Hospitals earning a 5-star rating include: Avera Heart Hospital, Avera Marshall Regional Medical Center, Avera Sacred Heart Hospital and Avera St. Luke's Hospital
  • Numerous Avera hospitals are listed by Chartis among the Top 100 Rural & Community Hospitals and Critical Access Hospitals.

View Other Awards

Well-Balanced Health Tips

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Brick and Mortar Investments

List of top projects underway or completed in 2024:

  • Café renovation, Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center, Sioux Falls, SD*
  • Oncology relocation, Prairie Center 5th floor, Sioux Falls, SD
  • Inpatient rehabilitation relocation and gym, Avera Specialty Hospital, Sioux Falls, SD
  • Women’s Center renovation, Avera St. Luke’s Hospital, Aberdeen, SD*
  • Clinic renovation, Marshall, MN
  • Café renovations, Avera Holy Family Hospital, Estherville, IA
  • Emergency Department and Radiology renovations, Avera St. Anthony’s Hospital, O’Neill, NE
  • Integrated Service Center, Sioux Falls, SD
  • Avera Heart Hospital addition, Sioux Falls, SD
  • Behavioral Health unit, Avera St. Luke’s Hospital, Aberdeen, SD*
  • Pharmacy relocation, Avera Marshall Regional Medical Center, Marshall, MN
  • Platte Health Center Avera addition and renovation, Platte, SD
  • Avera Behavioral Health Hospital first floor fit and finish, Sioux Falls, SD*

*Supported by philanthropy through the Avera Foundation