Hospitals Labor Economics Supply of Medical Services

Do hosiptal CEOs make too much money?

Paul Levy, the president and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston made about $1 million dollars in 2005. Of this, $650,000 was base salary, $195,000 was made up of incentive bonus, and the balance was composed of compensation for health insurance, life insurance, and retirement.
How do I know these figures? Paul Levy told me. Well, he didn’t tell me directly, but he did post these figures on his Running a Hospital blog. Levy writes:
So, if you were on my board, how would you set an appropriate salary? You might look at the competition, and as the Globe notes, the salaries for most of the Boston-area hospital CEOs center around the same level. Would you look at salaries of people in for-profit companies, and, if so, how do you measure comparable size and complexity? Would you look at salaries of other types of non-profits, like universities and museums?

Does it matter that the average tenure of a hospital CEO is under six years? If that is roughly the tenure of a major league baseball player, should CEO salaries be in the same ballpark? Sorry, I couldn’t resist!

The New York Times recently posted an interactive page on executive pay. So the question remains, readers, how would you set Paul Levy’s salary?