With not-for-profit healthcare systems facing growing scrutiny of their executive compensation, median total pay for the top 25 highest paid chief executives climbed 12% while base salaries grew 3% year over year, according to Modern Healthcare's analysis of recent public information available on not-for-profit compensation.
According to Form 990s filed by not-for-profit systems to the IRS for 2011, median total compensation was $3.8 million with median base pay of $1.1 million. Data for 2011 were not available for all 25 because all 990s were not available through Guidestar.org by June, when Modern Healthcare closed its survey. In 2010, median total compensation for the top 25 executives was roughly $3.8 million, with median base compensation of $994,709, according to 990s filed for 2010.
The top paid, actively employed executive on the list was George Halvorson, the outgoing chairman and CEO of Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente, who received total compensation of $7.9 million in 2011 with $1.2 million in base salary and $5 million in incentive pay. His total compensation increased 2.5% in 2011. Kaiser, which operates a giant health plan, 32 hospitals and more than 600 medical offices, ended 2011 with revenue of $47.9 billion and operating income of $1.6 billion.