At MA hospitals, non-profit CEO pay draws fire

A recent set of advances in non-profit CEO salaries has created a firestorm of controversy in Massachusetts. According to filings with the Massachusetts Attorney General, chief executives with not-for-profit hospitals saw significant pay and benefit increases in 2005. At many of the larger non-profits, CEOs made more than $1 million and overall compensation for the highest paid exec, Partners HealthCare CEO James Mongan, crossed the $2 million mark. The pay hikes have drawn scathing criticism from the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), the state's largest healthcare union. The MNA contends that this is a particularly bad time for CEOs to be taking a pay hike, given that one in four patients--about 235,000 people--reported in 2005 that their safety was compromised during their stay. The hospitals, meanwhile, say that they must offer this kind of pay to prevent these execs from being snatched away by private industry or competing healthcare organizations.

Get background on the CEO pay issue:
- read this article in The Boston Globe
- check out the MNA's press release