Non-Profit Hospital Executive Salaries Continue to Defy Gravity and Logic

The old saying is that nothing is certain except death and taxes.  In health care, the other near certainty seems to be that compensation for health care leaders is big and always getting bigger.  Over the past few weeks several reports about the compensation of top executives of US non-profit hospitals and hospital systems have appeared.  So it is time to do our latest round-up of incessantly buoyant hospital executive compensation, and argumentative hot air that seems to fuel it.  I will first summarize the latest cases in alphabetical order by state, and then examine some common justifications for the seemingly anti gravitational nature of executive compensation in this part of health care.ArizonaOn AZCentral.com was an article about the CEO of a single relatively small public hospital system:The leaders of Maricopa County’s public health-care system agreed to raise chief executive Betsey Bayless’ pay by 33 percent, bringing her salary to $500,000.That may not seem like a lot of money as executive compensation goes, but consider the context:The Maricopa Integrated Health System is a public hospital system that provides care for the Valley’s poor and uninsured. It is funded by federal and state health-care dollars and a special county levy paid by all county property-tax payers.MIHS budgeted $3.5 million for market adjustments and merit raises for its employees in fiscal 2013. Bayless’ salary increase alone will consume one-quarter of the ...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: hospitals executive compensation academic medical centers logical fallacies Source Type: blogs