U.S. Nonprofit Hospital CEO Annual Pay Averages $600,000

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-14/u-s-nonprofit-hospital-ceo-annual-pay-averages-600-000.html

Heads of U.S. nonprofit hospitals earn an average of almost $600,000 a year, compensation that isn’t tied to quality measures such as mortality rates, a Harvard University study found.

The chief executive officers paid the most oversee larger, urban hospitals that are usually teaching institutions and have a median salary of more than $1.66 million, according to research published today in JAMA Internal Medicine. The top executives paid the least –- a median of $117,933 –- are most often at small, non-teaching facilities in rural areas.

The findings are among the first to detail how much nonprofit hospital CEOs are paid and the variations in salaries, said Ashish Jha, the study’s senior author. As insurers and government programs such as Medicare link compensation to the quality of care, hospital CEO pay appears out-of-step with the trend in the health industry, he said.

“I was surprised that quality, things like hospital death rates, seemed to have little influence on CEO compensation,” Jha, a professor of health policy at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, said in an e-mail. “These findings suggest that while doctors are increasingly paid based on their quality scores, the same may not be happening for senior hospital leaders like CEOs.” Hospital boards can decide that quality measures, especially ones that track patient outcomes, are critical to CEO pay, Jha said.

[PA Democrat]

1. UPMC CEO Jeffrey Romoff received $6.07 million last year.

UPMC also owns one of the 2 biggest health insurance companies in western PA and is engaged in an obscene battle with their biggest competitor, Highmark to gain a monopoly on the local market. Highmark also owns a chain of "nonprofit" hospitals. Both companies are spending millions in an all-out media war running non-stop TV commercials bad-mouthing each other.

Highmark paid more than $6 million to its CEOs last year.

This very publicly waged battle is such a clear illustration of why our health care system is broken, but people continue to fear a "government takeover" of health care. People with Highmark insurance may be unable to use any UPMC hospitals and doctors if the two do not end their power grabbing schemes.


http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/business/news/upmc-paid-26-employees-over-1-million-last-year-688004/

http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2013/08/01/upmc-and-highmark-engage-in-tv-ad-war/

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/business/news/highmark-ceo-compensation-tops-6m-679520/