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USA TODAY Network’s David Robinson on Hospital Executive Pay Increase

Sakege November 13, 2024

David Robinson is the health care reporter for the USA TODAY Network in New York. His nearly 20-year career as an investigative reporter has earned him state and national awards for his coverage of the opioid epidemic, hospital and nursing home abuse, health inequality, COVID-19 and failures in response. to emergencies.

Robinson has a new article on hospital executive compensation, a topic he returns to every year. We asked him about it:

He has been writing about total compensation for hospital executives, including bonuses and benefits, for years. Why is it important for the public to know how much executives are paid?

Tracking how money is spent in hospitals is key to improving everyone’s health and well-being. People who are well-informed about financial priorities within healthcare are better equipped to drive positive changes, whether by asking policymakers to act or simply deciding where to spend their own healthcare dollars.

Hospital leadership is a rarefied world. What do executives do?

It depends on the job. The role of a CEO is often very different from that of a vice president focused on a particular aspect of the hospital, such as compliance with government healthcare policies. The size of the hospital and health system also influences its work.

In general, however, hospital executives effectively supervise hundreds (or thousands) of employees who provide a complex web of medical and community services to dozens of patients.

Hospital groups say hospitals must offer high compensation to get top talent. Is there any truth in this?

Hospitals compete for talented workers and pay outside consulting firms to recommend executive pay rates based on trends in comparable markets.

But a recent national investigation suggests that some New York hospitals may be overpaying top executives. CEOs of nonprofit hospitals nationwide received an average of $1.3 million in 2019, according to a Rice University study. In New York, the average was about $2.1 million in 2020, our report shows.

At the same time, this question also requires exploring whether top hospital executives would leave to seek jobs in other fields, such as pharmaceutical companies or health insurers, if hospital bonuses were lower.

Nurses unions have been saying loudly in recent years that staffing shortages are compromising patient care. Hospital executives say there is a shortage of nurses. Who is right?

During the pandemic, the national nursing competition caused an explosion in demand for travel nurses and temporary nursing jobs. Hospital executives today say, in part, that ongoing national competition, as well as the growing number of nurses leaving the field due to burnout, continue to fuel nursing shortages.

But nursing unions are quick to counter that, in fact, there are enough nurses in the U.S. today, but not enough who choose to work in the hospital jobs needed to address the staffing shortage.

Simply put, hospitals must make staffing a financial and systemic priority.

You cited an expert who said New York should limit payments to executives at failing hospitals. Could this happen?

State lawmakers have already shown they are willing to influence how health care providers spend money. For example, a 2021 measure requires nursing homes to spend at least 70% of revenue on direct resident care and at least 40% of revenue on resident-facing staff.

But the odds that lawmakers or Health Department regulators will impose any kind of control over hospital executive compensation, in any way, come down to whether everyday New Yorkers demand change.