Many of the top non-profit hospital and physician executives in New York State received millions of dollars in compensation in 2014, according to a new survey by the Democrat & Chronicle, which is part of the USA Today Network.
Among those on the list, Michael Dowling, chief executive officer of Northshore University Hospital, received an eight-figure pay package, earning total compensation of $10.1 million. Two other executives were paid a total of more than $5 million, and seven others received more than $3 million. Fifteen more earned more than $2 million, according to the report.
Altogether, 112 execs on the list had total pay packages exceeding $1 million in 2014. They included some unusual positions: Scott Pittman, the chief investment officer for Mount Sinai Medical Center, was paid $1.1 million; Anne McSweeney, a special advisor to the president at Memorial Sloan-Kettering was paid $1.3 million; and Michael Israel, listed as a trustee at Westchester Medical Center, was paid $1.99 million.
High executive pay at non-profit hospitals has been a fact of life for years, but recent studies have suggested that those receiving the top compensation don't always correlate to performance in areas such as inpatient complications and expenses.
In addition to the high pay, the Democrat & Chronicle also reported what appeared to be numerous financial conflicts of interest involving hospital board members. They included the University of Rochester Medical Center paying more than $2 million to Xerox for business services, even though one of its trustees, John Kelly, is a Xerox executive. Arnot Ogden Medical Center in Elmira, New York, paid more than $5.8 million to "competitively bid loans and custodian investments, with Chemung Canal Trust Co. acting as the conduit. One of its trustees, David Dalrymple, serves as Chermung's chairman of the board.
Potential conflicts of interest among high-ranking healthcare executives are also not uncommon: A report released last year concluded that many such executives and clinicians also supplement their income by serving on the boards of publicly-traded healthcare companies.
To learn more:
- read the salary survey
- check out the article