David Robinson is the health care reporter for Network in New York. His nearly 20-year career as an investigative reporter has garnered state and national awards for coverage of the opioid epidemic, hospital and nursing home abuses, health inequality, COVID-19 and emergency response failures.
Robinson has a new article about compensation for hospital executives, a subject he revisits each year. We asked him about it:
You’ve been writing about total compensation for hospital executives, including bonuses and perks, for years. Why is it important for the public to know what executives are getting paid?
Following how money gets spent within hospitals is key to improving the health and well-being of everyone. People who are well-informed about the financial priorities within health care are better equipped to drive positive change ‒ whether it’s calling on lawmakers to act or simply deciding where to spend their own money in health care.
Hospital leadership is a rarefied world. What do executives even do?
It depends upon the job. A CEO’s role is typically much different than a vice president focused on a particular aspect of the hospital, such as compliance with government health care policies. The size of the hospital and health system also impacts their work.
In general, though, hospital executives are effectively overseeing hundreds — or thousands — of employees who deliver a complex web of medical and community-based services to scores of patients.
Hospital groups say that hospitals must offer high compensation in order to get top talent. Is there any truth to this?
Hospitals do compete over talented workers and pay outside consulting firms to recommend executive pay rates based on trends in comparable markets.
But recent national research suggests some New York hospitals could be overpaying top executives. CEOs at nonprofit hospitals across the country on average got paid $1.3 million in 2019, a Rice University study found. In New York, the average was about $2.1 million in 2020, our reporting shows.
At the same time, this issue also requires exploring whether top hospital executives would leave to find jobs in other fields, such as pharmaceutical companies or health insurers, if hospital bonuses got smaller.
Nurses’ unions have been saying loudly in recent years that understaffing is compromising patient care. Hospital executives say there is a nursing shortage. Who’s right?
During the pandemic, national competition for nurses triggered an explosion in demand for travel nurses and temporary nurse jobs. Hospital executives today assert, in part, that ongoing national competition, as well as increasing numbers of nurses leaving the field due to burnout, continue to fuel a nurse staffing shortage.
But nurses’ unions are quick to counter that, in fact, there are currently enough nurses in the U.S., but not enough of them are choosing to work the in-hospital jobs needed to address understaffing.
Put simply, hospitals must make staffing a financial and systemic priority.
US faces nurse staffing perfect storm: About a third plan to leave, survey finds
You quoted an expert saying that New York should limit payouts to executives at subpar 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 staffing.
But the odds that lawmakers or Department of Health regulators impose some form of control on hospital executive pay, in some ways, boils down to whether everyday New Yorkers demand change.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: USA TODAY Network’s David Robinson on hospital executives’ rising pay
