The Terribly Difficult Things Health Care CEOs Must Do to Make the Big Bucks: Back-to-Back Meetings, Complicated Schedules, Fatiguing Driving?!

On Health Care Renewal, we have been decrying American health care dysfunction since 2004 (look here).  For years, the US consistently has had the most expensive health care system of any developed country.  For that exhorbitant price, it provides at best medicocre access to and quality of care.

We have long contended that a major reason for health care dysfunction is perverse incentives, including those that allow top health care leaders to become rich by putting money ahead of patient care.  We have presented case after case supporting this point.  So what do health care CEOs have to do to make so much money?

The Hardest Part of CEOs' Days

A recent post in Beckers Hospital Review discussing what "the brightest executives in the healthcare industry" think are the hardest parts of their days.  Here is the summary, edited for brevity:

1. Andrew Agwunobi, MD, CEO UConn Health (Farmington, Conn.): 'when we lose, or are facing the possible loss of good talent.'

2. Wael Barsoum, MD, CEO of Cleveland Clinic Florida (Weston): 'if I hear about an issue that came up with a patient where they felt like we could've done better. It is hard to read letters that said we didn't do something up to their expectations.... these reports and issues are very rare' 

3. David Dill, CEO of LifePoint Health (Brentwood, Tenn.): 'shaking the nagging feeling that I didn't get everything done that I need to, mainly because I didn't mark 10 things off a list like I used to'

4. Suresh Gunasekaran, CEO of University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics (Iowa City): 'We hold ourselves to a very high standard ...  sometimes, very rarely, we don't hit that standard.... I take a lot of personal responsibility for those failures

5. Tom Jackiewicz, CEO of Keck Medicine (Los Angeles): 'Since it takes awhile to get on my calendar, I need to ensure I am managing my own emotions to maintain my focus so everyone gets the attention they deserve'

6. Dr. Divya Joshi, CEO of OSF HealthCare's Children's Service Line (Peoria, Ill.): 'when an initiative gets stuck and is unable to move forward because there are so many people involved or options to pursue....  Beyond that, I would say when I don't have the answer to something.'

7. Ketul Patel, CEO of CHI Franciscan (Tacoma, Wash.): 'days full of meetings that are back-to-back'

8. Chris Van Gorder, CEO of Scripps Health (San Diego): 'there are bad things that happen occasionally. That burden falls on me.... when something happens to a patient that shouldn't have happened or if one of my employees is attacked by a patient, those days are difficult'

9. Prathibha Varkey, CEO of Yale New Haven (Conn.): Health's Northeast Medical Group. 'driving between the different practices,... driving can be physically exhausting'

10. Kevin Vermeer, CEO of UnityPoint Health (West Des Moines, Iowa) 'when I must make tough decisions that impact people's lives'

11.Andrea Walsh, CEO of HealthP artners (Bloomington, Minn.). 'juggling priorities on my calendar'

12. Jeff Welch, CEO of Florida Medical Center and Tenet's Miami-Dade Group (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.): 'making sure that everything our organization does is for the betterment of the patient and the community'

13. Albert Wright, PharmD, CEO of WVU Hospitals and WVU Health System (Morgantown, W.Va.): 'it's just keeping everybody rowing in the same direction. The other challenge is that we've been on this huge growth boom ... .Trying to keep up with the growth has been a challenge because you want to help others and save some of these challenged hospitals, but you have to grow at a pace that is safe and people can keep up with'

Things are tough all over.  As a physician, I am unimpressed.  I do realize that some of the lists above included vague references to "bad things that happen," "issues that come up," not hitting a "standard," making "tough decisions," etc.  However, without further detail, I wonder if these refer to anything  comparable to the urgent  issues and decisions that doctors and nurses can face on any given day?

Many of the issues cited with more specificity seem trivial, to be charitable.  So the hardest part of being a CEO could be not completing your daily to-do list; attending back-to-back meetings; trying to focus on people with whom you meet; driving around a lot; or juggling calendar priorities?

These are not exactly the sort of hardship postings that seem to demand lavish compensation.



The Money They Make

Yet we have noted that CEOs do get lavish compensation.  The CEOs above who complained of the most trivial hardships, who have to wrestle with busy schedules, multiple meetings, and heavy traffic etc are often paid ... millions.  Consider the following examples, which are  based on the most recent compensation data I could find:

David Dill, whose worst day would be one in which he did not check off his to-do list, is in line for a $25 million dollar plus golden parachute (look here).  According to Salary.com, his total compensation in 2017 was $5,372,271. It may be higher now.

Tom Jackiewicz, whose worst day would be one in which he had to manage his emotions to focus on people with whom he was meeting, had a total compensation of $2,322,895 reported on the USC 2019 form 990.

Prathibha Varkey, whose worst day involved a lot of driving, made $187,024 reportable compensation from Yale New Haven Health Services Corporation, $748,096 reportable compensation from related organizations, and $226,128 other compensation, totaling $1,161,248 according to the Yale Health Service Corporation form 990 from 2019 via ProPublica.

Andrea Walsh, whose worst day was one in which she had to juggle priorities on her calendar, made $1,085,956 as Executive Vice President for Marketing in 2017, the last year for which full 990 data is available from HealthPartners via ProPublica.  Her current compensation is likely more.

The things you have to do to bring in those big bucks.

For Comparison, The Hardest Parts of Physicians' Days
 
So let's see... in my clinical career as an academic general internist, I faced 100 hour work weeks as an intern.  From internship through my career as a hospital-based educator, I had to cope with numerous life-threatening medical emergencies, numerous acute situations in which bad decisions could lead to patients unnecessarily dying or ending up disabled or chronically ill.  I had to tell patients they had incurable illnesses, and console the family those who were dying.  Furthermore, many other doctors have had more difficult lives.  Think about what trauma surgeons do every day, just for one example.

I am sure my colleagues in nursing could come up with their own harrowing lists.


On a personal level, there were many times I would have given anything for a day when the worst problem I had to encounter was a full schedule, boring meetings, or being stuck in traffic.


So tell me again why hospital CEOs make the big bucks, often much bigger than those made by health care professionals in the same institution?

Summary

Inflated executive compensation in health care is rarely challenged, but when it is, the responses are formulaic.  Justifications are usually made by public relations flacks who are accountable to these executives, or the executives' cronies on their boards of trustees.  As I wrote in 2015,  and in May, 2016,  It seems nearly every attempt made to defend the outsize compensation given hospital and health system executives involves the same arguments, thus suggesting they were authored as public relations talking points. Additional examples appear here, here here, here, here, and here, here and here. 

The talking points are:
- We have to pay competitive rates
- We have to pay enough to retain at least competent executives, given how hard it is to be an executive
- Our executives are not merely competitive, but brilliant (and have to be to do such a difficult job).

Yet the examples above suggest that the work of a top health care manager hardly is as difficult as that of a health care professional.  And as we have discussed, these talking points are otherwise easily debunked.  But that certainly has not stopped executive compensation from rising year after year. 

The plutocratic compensation given leaders of non-profit hospitals is usually justified by the need to competitively pay exceptionally brilliant leaders who must do extremely difficult jobs.  Yet even leaders whose records seem to be the opposite of brilliance, or whose work does not seem very hard, often end up handsomely rewarded.

Other aspects of top health care managers' pay provide perverse incentives.  While ostensibly tied to hospitals' economic performance, their compensation  is rarely tied to clinical performance, health care outcomes, health care quality, or patients' safety.  Furthermore, how managers are paid seems wildly out of step with how other organizational employees, especially health care professionals, are paid.

Exalted pay of hospital managers occurred after managers largely supplanted health care professionals as leaders of health care organizations.  This is part of a societal wave of "managerialism."  Most organizations are now run by generic managers, rather than people familiar with the particulars of the organizations' work. 

That CEOs would view the minor travails of bureaucratic life as so significant suggests how deep they are within their managerialist bubbles, and how little they understand and relate to what their organizations actually are supposed to do, provide health care on the ground to real patients. 

Rather than putting patient care first, paying generic managers enough to make them rich now seems to be the leading goal of hospitals. I postulate that managerialism is a major reason the US health care system costs much more than that of any other developed country, while providing mediocre access and health care quality.

Improving the situation might first require changing regulation of executive compensation practices in hospitals, improving its oversight, and making hospital boards of trustees more accountable.  But that would be just a few small steps in the right direction

True health care reform might require something more revolutionary, the reversal of the managers' coup d'etat, returning leadership of health care to health care professionals who actually care about patients and put their and the public's health first, ahead of their personal gain.  Of course, that might not be possible without a societal revolution to separate managers from the levers of power in government, industry, and non-profit organizations. Remember the most salient example of managerialism now for most people in the US is a an executive with a Wharton business degree as the President of the United States.

Michael Fine's Health Care Revolt

Michael Fine, M.D., HealthCare Revolt: How to Organize, Build a Health Care System, and Resuscitate Democracy – All at the Same Time (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2018).

Dr. Michael Fine is a man on fire. He’s on fire with anger about a healthcare marketplace that serves well to maximize the profits of investors and CEOs, but violates the values of many of those working in it. He’s on fire with enthusiasm about the potential of public health and prevention and about the value of integrated primary care. He’s on fire with determination to work to change our scattered health care marketplace into an actual health care system that could monitor and manage every citizen’s health. And he has concrete suggestions and a vision of how to work toward that end.

And, from what’s recounted here, Dr. Fine has an admirable practical record of implementing health care change on a local level in Rhode Island and in the Scituate area. In Scituate, he organized the non-profit Scituate Health Alliance and worked with residents and local officials to provide primary medical and dental care to all town residents. He envisions small local health care systems like his serving as a model that will show the feasibility of a better health system to both conservatives and liberals and eventually enable scaling up to a better national system. (This is quite reminiscent to me of how the great Nye Bevan, in the middle of the last century, successfully used the model of the Tredegar Medical Aid Society  and similar organizations to plan the NHS at its inception.)

What I liked best about the book is that Dr. Fine has an accurate gut understanding of just how much money we do spend on healthcare and of how harmful it is that we have let the “healthcare” sector balloon to such a large part of our economy. He realizes too how much of this - including many foolish things - is supported by public tax monies. And he really gets that this comes at a huge cost to the other things we could be spending that money on – and spending it on other things instead that are just as important to health would enhance people’s health, not diminish it. As he said in a related interview: “[To improve health,] we need to spend money on education … housing … community development … the environment. These …matter most for health. The paradox is that the more we spend on medical service expenditures that we don’t need, the less we spend on those things. In a certain way, healthcare is at war with health.”

I love Dr. Fine’s suggestion that one of the things we need to do to move toward healthcare improvement is to constantly highlight these costs and the damage done. Once we get to where everyone really understands this, we will have moved a big step forward. Working hard to publicize and delegitimize the cruelly extractive techniques of health care profiteers is worthwhile.

There’s all the difference in the world between making a living, including an excellent living, from people’s medical needs and making a killing from them – and in recent years the balance has shifted where we can fairly say that pharmaceutical companies, large hospital organizations, and many other medical sector big players are doing the latter.  I also like how he points out that “with …few exceptions, no health care market actor has a public portfolio (p. 84).” He’s right, and the corrupt marketplace – what Dr. Fine terms a “wealth extraction system” – has not gotten us to a good place for the public – at all.

So, in some ways, this book is inspiring – but in other ways, it is quite irritating. Dr. Fine is so wrapped up in his own perspective that he often is blind to and discounts the value of those parts of medicine that have not been his personal focus. Although I certainly agree with him that there are too many specialists and too much medical overuse, Dr. Fine seems insultingly unappreciative of valuable, needed services that specialists also offer, suggesting that one of the main ways generalists help their patients is by keeping them out of the clutches of specialists who may injure them. He seems, too, to class highly-paid specialists with high earners like CEOs where in my opinion this is ridiculous (specialists are after all basically pieceworkers and are not really similar to administrators, investors, and pharmaceutical executives – even if you think – and I do - they could rightly earn a bit less). Similarly, although I agree with him that the incorporation of a profiteering infrastructure into Obamacare and its lack of universality diminished its value, it’s unseeing to contend that it helped only a few people and that hardly counted. Dr. Fine grudgingly concedes that he likes that Obamacare funded more preventive services, ignoring the far more important benefits it provided to some of those MOST in need of medical care, those with clinical problems and issues. Dr. Fine should talk to some of the people who literally moved to Medicaid expansion states to save their lives first, before minimizing Obamacare’s benefits.

And, Dr. Fine doesn’t seem to have a grip on how unappealing many of us would find the world he dreams of. “Let’s close all center cities to private cars during normal working hours; let’s find ways to provide incentives for people who are not disabled to use the stairs rather than elevators (p. 71).”  He also suggests heavily taxing industrial food products, as well as the production of wheat, corn and sugar (p.70), oddly suggesting that we don’t need any of these crops any more for human consumption (which is news to me). Many readers, unlike Dr Fine, would have less than zero enthusiasm for living under such a heavy-handed, dictatorial regime and would (I believe fairly) consider some of their freedom lost.

As I read this book, I couldn’t help but compare it to a book by another strong advocate of more primary care, Richard Young’s American Health$care: How the healthcare industry’s scare tactics have screwed up our economy – and our future. Dr. Young is the single other person I can recall being as angry and as perceptive as Dr. Fine about the damage done from monies that could and should be spent on other things for more benefit – including health benefit – but which instead are being sucked away by what he calls the “government-medical-industrial coalition.”

Both really believe in primary care. But Dr. Young also realizes, as Dr. Fine does not, that “prevention” – just as truly as medical care for the sick - has many limits and can itself be a waste of money and inordinately expensive. (His discussion of what costs vs. benefits would be of an imaginary Texas tetanus initiative is sound.) And to Dr. Young, the primary purpose of medical care is care for the SICK.  (No matter how much prevention we have, at some point sickness or injury will happen to all - and this is the crux of medicine.) I recommend reading these two books together, to understand how two capable, decent, intelligent, and sincere doctors can have so much agreement on some things and such intense lack of agreement on others.

I know one thing – if I had to choose one as my primary care doctor, I’d be very comfortable choosing Dr. Young and would absolutely avoid Dr. Fine. Clearly, Dr. Fine would have his own agenda for me (he sees primary care doctors as mostly health nags), but Dr. Young, by contrast, would be responsive to what matters to me and my agenda, so we would be able to work together to manage any ailments in a “minimally disruptive” way that would be actually helpful. And although I personally agree with Dr. Fine’s desire to have more publicly-run, genuinely non-profit healthcare such as community health centers (and ultimately nationalized health care) and to legally rein in health profiteers, there are some definite “stoppers” for me in buying off on his whole vision and signing up to his plan.

Fine’s insensitivity and rigidity in some areas and his impersonality is the reason that if I’m going to introduce a friend to the concept of health care revolt I’ll give them instead Victor Montori’s book: Why We Revolt: A patient revolution for careful and kind care. Dr. Montori’s down-to-earth compassion for the ill inspires more trust, and, like Dr. Fine, Dr Montori too insists on the role of patient as citizen in reforming health care to a system more consonant with patient and physician values, but in a more persuasive way that is more convincing in making me like his healthcare vision.

Heads They Win, Tails We Lose - Non-Profit Hospital Executives Paid Generously After They Were Shown the Door

On Health Care Renewal, we have been decrying American health care dysfunction since 2004.  For years, the US consistently has had the most expensive health care system of any developed country.  For that exhorbitant price, it provides at best medicocre access to and quality of care.  The latest (2017) international comparison of health systems produced by the Commonwealth Fund shows that the US spends about 16% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care, compared to less than 12% spent by 10 other countries.  The US ranked no better than fifth on performance rankings measuring care process, access, administrative efficiency, equity, and health care outcomes.  It had the worst access, equity and health outcomes.

Even given that some of the measures used are debatable, these are dismal results.  No wonder US physicians are demoralized and burnt-out, as we first noted in our 2003 article. [Poses RM.   A cautionary tale: the dysfunction of American health care. Eur J Intern Med 14 (2003) 123–130. Link here.] 

Health care dysfunction is commonly discussed in the US, especially since health care reform became a legislative priority during the Obama administration.  The resulting Affordable Care Act (ACA, "Obamacare") resulted in some improvement in access to health insurance, but problems with access, quality and cost remain.

It is hard to understand how such a dysfunctional system continues without considering who benefits from it. One group who greatly benefit is health care organizational managers.  We have frequently discussed their luxurious and ever increasing pay.  Furthermore, often their pay seems wildly disproportionate to their accomplishments.  For example, in June, 2017 we profiled the CEO of safety-net hospital who made over $1 million a year from an institution charged with caring for the poor.  His institution demonstrated no great achievements in clinical care or improving patient outcomes.  Meanwhile it was alleged that he tried to increase revenue via unethical means, and was even cozy with organized crime.  

Such executive compensation is rarely challenged, but when it is, the responses are formulaic.  Justifications are made by public relations flacks who are accountable to these executives, or the executives' cronies on their boards of trustees.  As I wrote in 2015,  and in May, 2016,  It seems nearly every attempt made to defend the outsize compensation given hospital and health system executives involves the same arguments, thus suggesting they were authored as public relations talking points. Additional examples appear here, here here, here, here, and here, here and here. 

They talking points are:
- We have to pay competitive rates
- We have to pay enough to retain at least competent executives, given how hard it is to be an executive
- Our executives are not merely competitive, but brilliant (and have to be to do such a difficult job).

As we discussed recently, these talking points are easily debunked.  Additionally, rarely do those who mouth them in support of a particular leader show evidence that they apply to that leader. Could so many highly paid executives be so brilliant?

Instead we now we present cases from the second part of 2017 in which non-profit hospital executives were given lavish compensation just after they were forced out of their jobs.In alphabetical order by the states in which the hospitals are located...

Florida: Broward Health Vice President Got $214,008 After Allegations of Improper Payments Lead to Resignation

As reported by the Broward County (FL) Sun-Sentinel first on August 7, 2017,

Doris Peek resigned July 20 as senior vice president of Broward Health, which runs five hospitals and various clinics, after a law firm hired by Broward Health accused her of improperly directing nearly $1.7 million to a company owned by a prominent Republican consultant. At the time of the report, Broward Health released a statement saying that it took the report 'very seriously' and that 'every individual at Broward Health is held accountable in order to uphold established legal and ethical standards.'

Peek’s severance agreement, released by Broward Health in response to a public records request from the Sun-Sentinel, states that she will receive $214,008, most of which represents six months’ severance and the rest accrued leave.

Under the agreement, signed by Broward Health interim chief executive officer Beverly Capasso, Peek may cooperate with any government investigators or regulators looking into Broward Health, a taxpayer-supported system legally known as the North Broward Hospital District. But she promised to not take Broward Health to court and 'not engage in any activity either oral or written which disparage or adversely affect Broward Health.'

Such non-disparagement clauses are common in severance agreements, although they have been criticized for allowing employers to cover up problems.

The hospital administration gave no clear reason for the generosity of the agreement.  

Asked why Broward Health would agree to such a payment, considering the highly critical contents of the report, Broward Health’s public relations agency, EvClay Public Relations, released this statement: 'It is the policy of Broward Health to not discuss severance agreements.' Pressed on the reason for this, the agency provided this statement: 'We respect the privacy of our employees.'

Given the placement of the non-disparagement clause in the agreement it is worth considering that the interim CEO, Ms Beverly Capasso, who approved the contract, was also under a cloud at the time it was written. The Sun Sentinel had previously reported,

The new chief executive of Broward’s largest public hospital system holds a master’s degree in health administration from a defunct university that has been identified by federal investigators as a diploma mill.

Beverly Capasso, who was just awarded a $650,000 annual salary to run Broward Health, received the degree from Kennedy-Western University, a mail and online institution based in California and Wyoming that closed in 2009 after failing to gain accreditation. Her resume invokes the degree at the very top, giving her name as 'Bev Capasso RN, BSN MHA.'

Furthermore, soon after the severance agreement was announced, the Sun-Sentinel reported more resignations among Broward Health management,

Two more top Broward Health executives quit this week, deepening the leadership turmoil at the taxpayer-supported hospital system.

Dionne Wong, senior vice president for human resources, and Mark Sprada, interim chief executive of Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, both resigned. 

And in the months since, other major management problems became apparent.

The resignations come after Broward Health’s credit rating was lowered last month by S&P Global Ratings, which cited weak financial results and the leadership turmoil at the troubled system, legally known as the North Broward Hospital District.

After that, the hospital system was also alleged to have given a no-bid contract to 21st Century Oncology, allegedly with the involvement of Florida governor Rick Scott (News-Press, September 25); and  has been under grand jury investigation for violations of the open meeting law (Sun-Sentinel, September 26).

Ms Peek was allegedly involved in improper contracting.  While Ms Peek may not have been responsible for all the additional trouble and turmoil at the hospital system, she surely participated in it.  On the other hand, there is no obvious offsetting evidence of the brilliance of her management.    Why reward her with such a generous severance package?

Georgia: South Georgia Medical Center CEO Will Get More than $2M After Allegations of Violations of Open Meeting Law Lead to Termination

As reported by the Valdosta (GA) Daily Times, July 6, 2017,

The former South Georgia Medical Center CEO will be paid more than $2 million over the next three years, for doing nothing.

Raymond Snead was ousted as CEO in March, but he’ll stay on the payrolls for a while, according to his termination letter.

The April 19, 2017 letter, effectively firing Snead, called the ouster a 'termination without cause.'

The hospital will continue to pay Snead $650,000 per year — his base annual salary — for the next three years, the letter says. He’ll also get a $2,000 car allowance each month during that period.

The local Hospital Authority, which governs the hospital, also gave Snead and his wife the option to receive health benefits for the three years. He took the offer, said Sam Allen, Hospital Authority chairman.

However, it appears that this executive also had not previously covered himself in glory, certainly not sufficient to justify this level of post-employment compensation.

Snead became CEO in September 2015, and the hospital had been under fire for poor management practices under his watch.

There also was a major issue with an apparent subordinate of Snead's on his watch.

Snead’s ouster came on the heels of the resignation of hospital attorney Walter New.

New, along with the entire Hospital Authority, got into trouble in 2016 when the group held a closed meeting without the public’s knowledge, which is a violation of Georgia law.

Furthermore, City Councilman Robert Yost

has called repeatedly for the resignations of Hospital Authority members, saying their mismanagement has caused the hospital great harm. 'They have run the ER into the ground. They have run off doctors, nurses and regular employees, some who have worked there for 25 to 30 years,” he said at the June 22 City Council meeting.

'They have intimidated employees and treated them like dirt. When it is time to reappoint the City of Valdosta’s representatives on this authority, I say let’s make sure they are all reappointed.'

'… (They) have again made very bad business decisions on our behalf and they should all be fired.'

Again, it seems that Snead's management was the opposite of brilliant, yet he was allowed to walk away with a multi-million dollar severance package. 

North Carolina: Nash UNC Health Center CEO Will Get More than $1M After Concerns about Revenue Losses and Patient Safety Lead to Retirement

As reported by the Rocky Mount (NC) Telegram, July 16, 2017, Larry Chewning the CEO of Nash UNC Health Care retired

with around $1 million since he has an ironclad two-year rolling contract, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Chewning didn't deny the amount he is receiving....

However, it turns out that he did not actually retire, but,

was asked to step down late last month by the local hospital board but was allowed to announce he was retiring.

The hospital was hardly transparent about the facts of the case, which were futher confused by (perhaps deliberately) complicated corporate relationships:

Inquiries into Chewning's salary and severance package led the Telegram on a goose chase involving lawyers, public relations spokesmen and uninformed officials.

Beginning with Chewning, there has been a series of refusals to disclose the salary of the top executive at a publicly-owned hospital in a state-owned network of hospitals. Drilling down, it was discovered that all the CEOs in the UNC system except for the UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill are employed by Rex Hospital, a privately-owned hospital in Raleigh.

'I am legally precluded from disclosing any information from my employment agreement with Rex Hospital,' Chewning said, including the contact information for Don Esposito, Rex Hospital's general counsel.

Esposito referred the Telegram to Alan Wolf, the media relations manager for UNC Health Care and UNC REX Healthcare.

'We comply with all legal requirements, but it's not our practice to disclose salary information, for competitive and privacy reasons,' Wolf said. 'Mr. Chewning is employed by Rex Hospital Inc., which is not a North Carolina governmental entity and therefore is not subject to Chapter 132, the Public Records Act.'

How public hospitals can have CEOs who are employees of a separate, private hospital system was not explained.

Even local government officials were kept in the dark.

Nash County officials said they understood that's they way it had to be, but none of them knew the CEO was being paid through Rex, which makes their salaries private.

Furthermore,

At least one member of the local hospital board said they don't understand how the process works and isn't sure how the hospital will get a new CEO. 'As part of the management agreement, UNC Health Care provides Nash with a CEO,' Wolf said. 'Having a centralized management team gives UNC Health Care more control over decisions and operations at its affiliated hospitals.'

But the hospital CEOs "provided" by state institution UNC all are employed by Rex?

Perhaps all this secrecy just added to the cognitive dissonance created when considering how Chewning's lucrative retirement package might have been related to events that lead up to Chewning's retirement:

Chewning's exit comes after the hospital has been losing money and in the wake of a negative patient safety report. Chewning will remain with the hospital while his replacement is sought, according to his retirement announcement.

So Chewning's management was hardly brilliant.  Yet those responsible for hospital governance were not only happy to let the CEO walk away with a munificent retirement package, they also did their best to obscure the facts of the matter

Ohio: Ohio State University Werner Medical Center CEO Receiving More than $1M Per Year as Senior Consultant After Complaints by Physicians Lead to Resignation

According to the Columbus (OH) Dispatch, August 16, 2017, after Dr Sheldon Retchin, the CEO of Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center resigned in May, but

from his resignation, which was announced on May 10, through June 30, Retchin was still paid the CEO and executive vice president salary and benefits for performing 'transitional duties,...

That base salary was $1.1 million.

[To make full disclosure, note that I was a colleague of Dr Retchin's when we were both young  faculty members in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Medical College of Virginia from 1987 - 1994.]

Thereafter,

a contract obtained by the The Dispatch on Tuesday shows that, since July 1, Retchin has been serving as senior advisor to the president for health policy at a base salary of $500,000 annually.  The university is also making a $600,000 annual contribution to a retirement plan for Retchin, who will hold the position for two years.

So his total compensation would be at least $1.1 million a year for two years post-retirement.  Also,

the new contract says he will be paid a 35 percent performance bonus.

The rationale for this new position per university spokesman Chris Davey was that

Retchin will make important contributions to Ohio State.

'Sheldon Retchin is a nationally known leader in health-care policy,' Davey said. 'During his two-year administrative appointment, he will advise the university concerning the critical issues of health-care reform, Medicaid policy and data-driven improvements to health outcomes.'

Left unsaid is that $1.1 million a year seems like greatly inflated compensation for a health policy adviser.

Also left unsaid were the circumstances surrounding Dr Retchin's departure.

Complaints against Rechin surfaced after a May 1 letter signed by 25 leading physicians criticized his leadership.  That was followed by a letter from five doctors representing the senior leadership of the medical center's Neurological Institute.  Another group of 14 physicians, who head clinical departments at the medical center, had engaged in discussions with top university l eaders.

Upon Retchin's resignation, the university issued a statement in which it said that allegations raised in the letters were untrue.  That prompted another critical letter from leaders in the College of Medicine's Department of Internal Medicine.

A report from a local television station's news department provided further details about why the physicians declared no confidence in Dr Retchin

Dozens of doctors and professors have written letters expressing 'no confidence' in the CEO of Ohio State's Wexner Medical Center.

10TV has obtained three letters from three different groups of doctors and staff members, including department chairs and senior leadership.

They all described problems with management and morale that they said are damaging care and endangering patients and issued a 'Vote of No Confidence' in CEO Sheldon Retchin and his leadership team.

They accused Retchin of a 'management style that is inconsistent with the University's values of excellence, integrity, transparency and trust' and of fostering a culture where physicians have been described as 'lazy' and the program called 'a complete mess.'

It has led to what they call a 'dramatic impact on morale' and 'an increasing number of faculty resignations.'

They said the consequences reach beyond the walls of the Wexner citing an ongoing shortage of doctors which in their words, 'endanger(s) patient safety and lowers the quality of care,' adding to the stress of remaining faculty.

Furthermore,

In the first letter, 25 staffers who signed it said they represent many more employees, but limited the number signing out of concern for retaliation.

They complained of threats against faculty leaders who don't 'get on board' with the plans of medical center leadership.

From the information publicly available, I cannot tell whether the complaints about patient safety and quality of care are valid.  Certainly, however, Dr Retchin's management was questionable.  Creating this degree of anger among the physician staff of an academic medical center hardly seems the mark of brilliant leadership.  Yet Dr Retchin, like the other executives above, seems to have been generously rewarded after he was forced out.

Summary

The plutocratic compensation given leaders of non-profit hospitals is usually justified by the need to competitively pay exceptionally brilliant leaders.  Yet even leaders whose records seem to be the opposite of brilliance often end up handsomely rewarded.  Thes are examples of perverse incentives.

Other aspects of top health care managers' pay provide perverse incentives.  While ostensibly tied to hospitals' economic performance, their pay is rarely tied to clinical performance, health care outcomes, health care quality, or patients' safety.  Furthermore, how managers are paid seems wildly out of step with how other organizational employees, espeically health care medical professionals, are paid.

Exalted pay of hospital managers occurred after managers largely supplanted health care professionals as leaders of health care organizations.  This is part of a societal wave of "managerialism."  Most organizations are now run by generic managers, rather than people familiar with the particulars of the organizations' work.  The best current example is the election of a business executive with an MBA to the Presidency of the United States.

Rather than putting patient care first, paying managers sufficiently to make them rich now seems to be the leading goal of hospitals. I postulate that managerialism is a major reason the US health care system costs much more than that of any other developed country, while providing mediocre access and health care quality.

Improving the situation might first require changing regulation of executive compensation practices in hospitals, improving its oversight, and making hospital boards of trustees more accountable.  But that would be just a few small steps in the right direction

True health care reform might require something more revolutionary, the reversal of the managers' coup d'etat, returning leadership of health care to health care professionals who actually care about patients and put their and the public's health first, ahead of their personal gain.  Of course, that might not be possible without a societal revolution to separate managers from the levers of power in government, industry, and non-profit organizations. 

Who Benefits from our Current Health Care Dysfunction? - Mallinckrodt's Leadership Maintains Impunity After Well Publicized Opioid Settlement

The Latest Mallinckrodt Settlement

Jeff Sessions, the current US Attorney General, is ginning up a lot of press coverage of his recent crackdown on makers of narcotics.  For example, per the Washington Post on July 11, 2017...

The Justice Department and Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals reached a $35 million settlement Tuesday to resolve allegations that the company failed to report signs that large quantities of its highly addictive oxycodone pills were diverted to the black market in Florida, where they helped stoke the opioid epidemic.

The agreement is the first with a major manufacturer of the opioids that have sparked a crisis of overdoses and addictions across the country. The Justice Department said the deal establishes 'groundbreaking' new standards that require the company to track its drugs as they flow through the supply chain to consumers in an effort to control the epidemic.

The company had argued that once it passed the drugs to wholesale distributors, it was not responsible for illegal diversion of the painkillers as they were sent to retailers and then pain patients.

'The Department of Justice has the responsibility to ensure that our drug laws are being enforced and to protect the American people,' Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. 'Part of that mission is holding drug manufacturers accountable for their actions. Mallinckrodt’s actions and omissions formed a link in the chain of supply that resulted in millions of oxycodone pills being sold on the street.'

A Slap on the Wrist with a Wet Noodle

Hold them accountable? With a $35 million dollar settlement? That should really strike fear into the hearts of evil-doers.  After all, this settlement is tiny compared to the magnitude of the behavior.

At one point, the government calculated that it could have assessed the company $2.3 billion in fines for nearly 44,000 violations of the federal Controlled Substances Act, according to confidential government documents obtained by The Post.

And,

Between 2008 and 2012, about 500 million of Mallinckrodt’s pills ended up in Florida, 66 percent of all oxycodone sold in the state, The Post reported.

Nearly 180,000 people died of overdoses of prescription painkillers between 2000 and 2015, and the abuse of pharmaceutical opioids is widely blamed for a crisis that now involves many thousands of overdoses on heroin and fentanyl.

Then, the settlement is tiny compared with the company's revenues.  For example, according to a recent company press release, Mallinckrodt had

Fiscal 2016 net sales of $3.381 billion, up 15.7%, principally driven by volume in Specialty Brands;...

Furthermore, the settlement let the company deny wrongdoing, stating

'While Mallinckrodt disagreed with the U.S. government’s allegations, we chose to resolve the legacy matter in order to eliminate the uncertainty, distraction and expense of litigation and to allow the company to focus on meeting the important needs of its patients and customers,' Michael-Bryant Hicks, the company’s general counsel, said in the release.

In addition, as we have seen in many other legal settlements arranged by US authorities, no individual at the company who oversaw, authorized, directed, or implemented the questionable actions paid any penalty. In fact, top executives at Mallinckrodt continue to make out like proverbial bandits.  Earlier this year the St Louis Post-Dispatch reported:

Mallinckrodt Chief Executive Mark Trudeau's pay jumped 29 percent to $12.6 million as the company rewarded him for a year when profits more than doubled.

Mallinckrodt, a drug company that is legally Irish but has its headquarters in Hazelwood, disclosed details of its executive pay in a proxy statement last week.

Trudeau's pay included a salary of $1.04 million and a bonus of $1.6 million, which was 127 percent of the target amount. He also received $5.9 million in stock and $3.9 million in options, with some of the stock depending on Mallinckrodt's revenue growth and total shareholder return between 2016 and 2018.

An earlier stock award, from 2014, paid out at 200 percent of its targeted amount. That brought Trudeau shares worth $2.5 million at current prices.

Trudeau also received $101,003 in contributions to a supplemental savings plan and $16,535 in tax reimbursement. The tax reimbursement was for executives whose spouses or partners attended a national sales conference.

So Mr Sessions  thought he was holding them accountable?

At least the Washington Post coverage added some dissent,

Joseph T. Rannazzisi, who supervised DEA efforts to control diversion of opioids for a decade before he retired in 2015, said Tuesday that multimillion-dollar fines have not deterred large pharmaceutical corporations accused of failing to report suspicious orders of pain pills to the DEA.

'These fines mean nothing to Fortune 500 companies,' he said. 'Large corporations see these fines as the cost of doing business. Unless there are meaningful sanctions brought against these companies, they will continue to violate the law.'

So the extremetly lenient treatment of Mallinckrodt and its top executives in this case will likely not deter health care corporate leaders from pursuing future bad behavior that is in the their self-interest.  Plus this case provides another example of the impunity of big health care organizations and their top executives. 

Just the Latest Mallinckrodt Settlement

And wait, there is more.  The latest settlement did not seem to be informed by any knowledge of the company's previous transgressions.  Like many other big health care organizations, Mallinckrodt and its predecessors have a long history of bad behavior which at worst has resulted in previous lenient settlements, wrist slaps, and executive impunity.  Consider some examples from this decade alone. 

The 2013 Settlement of Kickbacks to Doctors

As we noted in this post, for a few million dollars, Mallinckrodt settled allegations that it gave kickbacks to physicians to prescribe its antidepressants and sleeping tablets.

The 2015 Questcor Shareholder Suit Alleging Deception

As reported by the St Louis Business Journal,

Mallinckrodt PLC (NYSE:MKN) has announced a preliminary $38 million settlement in a shareholder lawsuit related to Questcor Pharmaceuticals Inc.

The settlement is pending approval by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. Mallinckrodt, a Dublin, Ireland, company with its U.S. headquarters in St. Louis, acquired Questcor in 2014 for $5.6 billion.

The settlement would resolve a class action lawsuit brought against Questcor alleging misstatements from former company officers and directors related to H.P Acthar Gel. Acthar, a drug used to treat autoimmune and inflammatory conditions, generated net sales for Questcor of $761.3 million in 2013.

Again, no individual who presided over, authorized, directed or implemented the misstatements suffered any negative consequences.

Note that H. P. Acthar gel, when marketed by Questcor, was one of the earliest examples of a company gaming the system to increase the prices of an old drug to outrageous levels (see our posts here).

The Questcor Anti-Competitive Practices Settlement

Then in early 2017 Mallinckrodt settled a case involving unfair competition, as reported by Reuters,

Mallinckrodt Plc (MNK.N) has agreed to pay $100 million to settle allegations that a subsidiary broke U.S. antitrust law by sharply increasing the price of a multiple sclerosis drug while ensuring that no rival medicine appeared on the market, the Federal Trade Commission said on Wednesday.

Mallinckrodt's share price dropped sharply to just under $43 from above $49 on a report Wednesday, which proved incorrect, that the FTC would sue Mallinckrodt. It spiked above $50 after news of a settlement and closed at $46.53, down 5.8 percent.

In 2001, Questcor bought the rights to Acthar, a type of hormone-based drug used to treat infantile spasms as well as multiple sclerosis. Over time, the company raised the price from $40 per vial to more than $34,000, the FTC said. Questcor was acquired by Mallinckrodt in 2014.

Acthar, which is off patent, represented 34 percent of Mallinckrodt's $3.4 billion in net sales for fiscal 2016, the company said in a government filing.

Per patient, Medicare spent more on Acthar than for any other drug in 2015, putting out $504 million for just 3,104 patients, according to the Medicare Drug Spending Dashboard.

Several U.S. drug makers have been criticized for sharp increases in drugs, notably Turing Pharmaceuticals' Daraprim and Mylan's (MYL.O) EpiPen. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported 11 drugs saw price increases of more than 100 percent in 2015.

'This is an egregious case of a monopolist doing a deal to eliminate potential competition and keep its power over pricing. It is abhorrent that lifesaving drugs cost New Yorkers tens of thousands of dollars,' said Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in a statement.

Again, Mallinckrodt denied all wrongdoing,

'We continue to strongly disagree with allegations outlined in the FTC's complaint, believing that key claims are unsupported and even contradicted by scientific data and market facts,' a company representative said in a statement.

And of course, to repeat, no one at the company who presided over, authorized, directed or implemented the anti-competitive practices suffered any negative consequences.

After that settlement, Sy Mukherjee wrote in Fortune that the

$100 million fine [was] for purposefully maintaining a monopoly on a drug that brought in one third of Mallinckrodt's $3.4 billion net 2016 sales. Although Mallinckrodt will have to sell off its U.S. license for the competing Novartis therapy, it has no obligation to lower Acthar's list price or hit pause on the price hikes since drug makers have carte blanche over their pricing in the U.S.

This highlights a critical moral hazard in the biopharma industry and the system of using fines to punish bad actors. Back when I was the editor of the trade publication BioPharma Dive, I had a fascinating conversation with Patrick Burns, Acting Executive Director and President of Taxpayers Against Fraud, a group that brings forward whistleblower cases under the anti-fraud False Claims Act. Burns argued that fines are ultimately ineffective because in the U.S., we 'privatize the profits and we communitize or communize, if you will, the costs.'

What Burns means is that, ultimately, news of a big fine can cause a short-term (and relatively insignificant) dent in a company's revenue stream and some PR backlash that can drive its stock price down (Mallinckrodt's shed about 7% of its market cap since the settlement). But ultimately, most of the people who suffer from that stock dip are the public and investors, not the executives who chose to engage in the bad behavior in the first place. That helps explain why some drug companies have been repeat offenders on practices like bribery and kickbacks.

Burns presented a much more provocative alternative to the fines system: ban the executives responsible for the fraud or other bad behavior from working in the industry for a number of years, or actually send them to jail.

Of course, that would be hard to do as long as our top political leaders are the best buddies of the multi-millionaires and billionaires who run the big pharmaceutical companies and other huge health care organizations that generate our health care dysfunction.


Summary and Discussion

Mallinkcrodt made settlements of four legal cases since 2010, involving kickbacks to physicians, various deceptions, and anti-competitive behavior.  The settlements never involved severe enough penalties to the company to really affect its bottom line, never required admission of responsibility, or any accountability by top executives whose huge remuneration were doubtlessly based on the revenues brought in by bad behavior.  Yet US Attorney General continued the Kabuki performance by proclaiming he would "hold them accountable."  Sessions just slapped the company on the wrist again, with a wet noodle.

That will show them.

This shows that despite all the hoopla lately about health care reform, our political debate completely misses most of the causes of our health care dysfunction.


There is suddenly a brief lull in the ongoing battle about whether to "repeal and replace Obamacare."  This was cast as a health care reform debate, but really at best "Obamacare" (the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) was a somewhat jury-rigged attempt to increase health insurance coverage without any substantial decrease in the US dependence on large often locally dominant for-profit insurance companies to provide health care insurance.  There was no serious discussion of alternatives, including "single-payer" government health insurance, much less a return to smaller non-profit insurance which might have some local accountability (see this post about Wendell Potter's Deadly Spin for an account of how non-profit insurance executives sold their organizations out to for-profits, greatly personally profiting from the process).

Even more to the point, there was no serious discussion of why US health care is the most expensive in the world, yet provides thoroughly mediocre service and outcomes, and still leaves many patients uninsured (see this LA Times article summarizing the latest Commonwealth Fund  report).

But while so many people are making fortunes from the current system, and are able to use their money to influence the ongoing debate, do not expect much change.  The case above is just one example showing how executives of big health care corporations can make millions while avoiding accountability for their actions.


As I have said until blue in the face,...

We will not make any progress reducing current health care dysfunction if we cannot have an honest conversation about what causes it and who profits from it.  True health care reform requires ending the anechoic effect, exposing the web of conflicts of interest that entangle health care, publicizing who benefits most from the current dysfunction, and how and why.  But it is painfully obvious that the people who have gotten so rich from the current status quo will use every tool at their disposal, paying for them with the money they have extracted from patients and taxpayers, to defend their position.  It will take grit, persistence, and courage to persevere in the cause of better health for patients and the public. 

A $1.7 Million/ Year CEO of a Safety Net Hospital - Alleged to Have Hired a Dangerous Surgeon, Paid Unethical Bonuses, and Associated with Organized Crime

We have long contended that a major reason for health care dysfunction is perverse incentives, including those that allow top health care leaders to become rich by putting money ahead of patient care.  We have presented case after case supporting this point, most recently including a collection of generously compensated top executives of non-profit hospital systems whose pay seemed disproportionate to their personal achievement, and unrelated to their hospitals' clinical outcomes or quality of care.

Such cases, with their recitations of monetary amounts and repeated public relations talking points, can be rather dry.  So this week we present another case which is a bit more colorful.


The Reliably High Pay of the CEO of Bronx-Lebanon Hospital

The CEO of the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital in New York City has long been criticized for receiving millions from a hospital which mainly serves the poor.

In 2009, the New York Post published an article entitled "Sickening Bonuses" about how

hospital presidents and CEOs ... collect fat bonuses and 'incentive payments,' even as health-care systems cry poverty,...

In particular it noted that presumably pre the 2008 global financial crisis:

A $1.2 million bonus went to Miguel Fuentes Jr., CEO of the 958-bed Bronx-Lebanon Hospital. His $4.8 million package included $878,024 in salary and an $858,000 pre-retirement payout. He’s also set to get $1.8 million in retirement cash next year.

In 2013, after the great recession, the New York World reported on a measure proposed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to cap salaries at hospitals that receive significant amounts of money from Medicaid.  It stated:

The hospitals that will be targeted by Cuomo’s salary cap sit in poorer neighborhoods and serve large volumes of patients who depend on Medicaid. They include Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center,...

At that time it was known that Mr Fuentes still was making a lot of money, although less than before:

Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center ... President and CEO Miguel Fuentes made more than $1.7 million in 2011, according to tax records....

In 2014, Modern Healthcare published an article that questioned whether hospital CEO pay was justified by their or their hospitals' performance.  In particular, it quoted a JAMA Internal Medicine article that:

found no association between CEO pay and very important benchmarks, including a hospital's 'margins, liquidity, capitalization, occupancy rates, mortality rates, readmission rates, or measures of community benefit.'

Researchers found wide variation in what trustees chose to pay the CEOs of their not-for-profit hospitals.

It also noted

One community hospital is a perennial on the list [of those with highly paid executives]. Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center's Miguel Fuentes Jr. has spent decades at his institution, and arguably needs no retention pay. His $1.8 million package includes about $200,000 in a supplemental retirement plan payment.

So what does a CEO have to do to earn millions at a safety-net hospital? Hospital boards and public relations officials often justify high CEO with standard talking points: their CEOs are brilliant, and such brilliant people must be paid well to be recruited and retained (look here).  However, I found no published record of any attempt to probe justifications for this particular CEO's pay.  Mr Fuentes does seem to have won an award from the local YMCA for "outstanding leadership" (look here).   In a 2015 news release about an affiliation between the Mount Sinai Health System and Bronx-Lebanon, the hospital was described as

a remarkable institution that has shown leadership through its commitment to delivering high quality care to patients and the communities in the Bronx

But I could not find anything in public about the particulars of this outstanding leadership.

Allegations of Organized Crime Ties

On the other hand, in June, 2017, the New York Post published two articles suggesting that Mr Fuentes' leadership might be a bit more dubious than advertised above.

The first article, published June 4, 2017, included allegations of shady dealings between the hospital and organized crime:

The mob turned taxpayer-backed Bronx-Lebanon Hospital expansion into its own piggy bank.

Construction expenses at the hospital’s new nine-story outpatient center ballooned by some $5 million — with cash allegedly ending up in the pockets of the Lucchese crime family and hospital executives, The Post has learned.

Lucchese underboss Steven 'Wonder Boy' Crea Sr. and associate Joseph Venice were charged with wire and mail fraud in connection with the project at 'a major New York City hospital,' according to a federal indictment unsealed last week in a major mob takedown. But the document didn’t identify the hospital or reveal the scheme’s dirty details.

No Bronx-Lebanon executives were named in the indictment, but the federal probe, which began four years ago, is ongoing, and focused on hospital honchos whose palms may have been greased.

Crea, 69, had close ties to Sparrow Construction, the Bronx firm in charge of building the $42 million annex at Bronx-Lebanon. He was a regular visitor to the firm’s offices while the center was under construction, a source told The Post.

Crea worked for Sparrow before he was busted in a 2000 state racketeering case. At that time, he was considered the acting boss of the Luccheses.

Work began on the outpatient center in 2009 and was supposed to take 19 months. But the Health and Wellness Center wasn’t finished until 2014 and was plagued with cost overruns.

Sparrow was the general contractor and billed the hospital $26 million for only $21 million worth of work, sources told The Post.

The heating and ventilation system cost $2.3 million to install. Yet 'the hospital still paid somebody $5 million' for it, the source said.

The alleged scheme was carried out through falsified invoices and change orders, the source said.

'The hospital didn’t question one change order,' the source said.

The bulk of the project was paid for through the sale of $36 million in state Dormitory Authority bonds. The hospital is paying back the Dormitory Authority over 25 years.

At the end of the article we found that Mr Fuentes' compensation has remained large, and stable.

Longtime CEO Miguel Fuentes’ total compensation came to $1.7 million in 2015, according to its latest tax filings.

But it added that he has had a lifestyle to match:

Fuentes lives a luxury lifestyle with a condominium on the Upper East Side and a Southampton retreat with a pool.

Allegations of Unethical Conduct to Enhance Revenue

A second article published June 24, 2017, raised further questions about Mr Fuentes' management.  First, it questioned his direct appointment of a chief of orthopedic surgery.

Hospital CEO Miguel Fuentes hired [Dr Ira] Kirschenbaum as a division chief without consulting Dr. John Cosgrove, who was then chief of surgery and would have overseen him, Cosgrove told The Post.

Cosgrove said he did not have a chance to vet Kirschenbaum.

The article suggested  that Dr Kirschenbaum was hired to push "moneymaking surgeries such as hip and knee replacements."  

However,

The hospital lavished six-figure bonuses to its chief of orthopedics, Dr. Ira Kirschenbaum, despite brass being told of four deaths after he arrived in 2008 and about others patients who suffered serious complications, according to sources.

Kirschenbaum received a $314,210 bonus in 2014 and a $180,940 bonus in 2015, according to Bronx-Lebanon’s tax filings. The extra pay came on top of his $851,000 salary.

Seven hospital employees, who identified themselves as doctors, nurses and technicians, sent The Post a copy of a letter they said they presented to a state medical disciplinary panel to complain about patients more recently injured under Kirschenbaum’s care — including one who allegedly lost a leg.

The letter was sent anonymously, and the state Health Department would not comment on any complaints to the Office of Professional Medical Conduct.

Furthermore, Dr Cosgrove, who appears to have become a whistleblower, alleged dodgy payments to hospital employed physicians at the behest of Mr Fuentes, apparently to increase patient volume.

Cosgrove also said he saw another troubling practice at the hospital: bonus payments of up to $60 paid to doctors for each visit made to the institution’s clinics — in order to tout that it treated 1 million patients annually. The hospital realized that number in 2012, according to the MD.

'Seeing a patient in the clinic is your obligation as a hospital physician and that should not be incentivized,' Cosgrove said. 'Mr. Fuentes said at many meetings he wanted to hit a million-visit mark at their 55-or-so outpatient clinics.'

Doctors were already paid salaries by Bronx-Lebanon, and the clinic bounties came from the Medicaid reimbursements, according to Cosgrove.

Such an incentive system was ripe for abuse because it could entice doctors to schedule additional, and possibly unnecessary, visits, he said.

'It’s really counter to what we as doctors stand for,' said Cosgrove, who left the hospital in 2013 and is now chief of surgery at Eastern Long Island Hospital.

Finally,the article reiterated Mr Fuentes' total compensation of $1.7 million in 2017, but added that

He has a car and a driver — and a source described a $20,000 glass-and-tile shower for his office bathroom. The shower was removed because of concerns over how such an amenity might appear, the source said.

Yet,

Fred Miller, a hospital lawyer, said Bronx-Lebanon doctors were not paid clinic bonuses, only salaries, and that compensation was 'consistent with Medicare/Medicaid principles.'

Miller acknowledged that a shower had been installed, but called it 'modest' and disputed its cost.

Summary

So the CEO of Bronx-Lebanon Hospital has been paid more than a million a year since at least 2008 (and much more than that in 2008 before the great recession), without any apparent public explanation for this pay, and particularly without any apparent attempts to  justify it based on quality of care or clinical outcomes.  Yet recently there have been allegations that the CEO was directly involved with efforts to increase revenue regardless of ethical or patient safety concerns.  Worse, there have also been allegations that organized crime has been allowed to create a "piggy bank" out of the hospital, perhaps in ways also benefiting top executives, although none of this has been proven in a court of law.

Nonetheless, it seems that high executive pay in health care, particularly at non-profit institutions serving the poor, should be justified by more than lack of proof that the executives broke the law. In fact, how could anyone justify paying the CEO of a non-profit hospital that primarily serves the poor using government money unless that person had a sterling record of accomplishment promoting the quality of clinical care at his or her institution, accompanied by integrity and accountability?

Instead, we get questions of mob influence and $20,000 showers.

So here we go again....

We will not make any progress reducing current health care dysfunction if we cannot have an honest conversation about what causes it and who profits from it.  True health care reform requires publicizing who benefits most from the current dysfunction, and how and why.  But it is painfully obvious that the people who have gotten so rich from the current status quo will use every tool at their disposal, paying for them with the money they have extracted from patients and taxpayers, to defend their position.  It will take grit, persistence, and courage to persevere in the cause of better health for patients and the public. 

Follow the Money: Non-Profit Hospital CEOs Quietly Collect Their Millions While US Health Care Reform Battle Rages

In Washington, DC the health care policy wars continue, with a few Republican senators working behind closed doors on a bill to "repeal and replace" Obamacare, aka the Affordable Care Act, and Democrats decrying their secrecy.  Just as during the era in which Obamacare was enacted, there is constant discusison of how US health care costs continually rise, driving up insurance premiums, and how access to health insurance is continually in peril.

However, while the current Republican process to write new legislation seems strikingly opaque, in neither era has there been a frank discussion of why US health care costs are so amazingly high, and disproportionate to our mediocre health care outcomes. In particular, there has hardly been any discussion of just who benefits from the rising costs, and how their growing wealth may impede any real cost-cutting measures.

Extreme Compensation for Top Managers of Non-Profit Hospitals

An obvious example is the gravity defying pay given to top health care managers, particularly the top managers of non-profit hospital systems.

Such systems provide much of the hospital care to Americans, and most have declared their missions to be providing the best possible care to all patients, or words to that effect.  Many explicitly include care of the poor, unfortunate and vulnerable as a major part of their missions.  As non-profit organizations, their devotion of mission provides some rationale to their freedom from responsibility for federal taxes.

As we last discussed in detail in May, 2016, we have suggested that the ability of top managers to command ever increasing pay uncorrelated with their organizations' contributions to patients' or the public's health, and often despite major organizational shortcomings indicates fundamental structural problems with US health, and provides perverse incentives for these managers to defend the current system, no matter how bad its dysfunction.

In particular, we have written a series of posts about the lack of logical justification for huge executive  compensation by non-profit hospitals and hospital systems.  When journalists inquire why the pay of a particular leader is so high, the leader, his or her public relations spokespeople, or hospital trustees can be relied on to cite the same now hackneyed talking points.

As I wrote in 2015,  and in May, 2016,

It seems nearly every attempt made to defend the outsize compensation given hospital and health system executives involves the same arguments, thus suggesting they are talking points, possibly crafted as a public relations ploy. We first listed the talking points here, and then provided additional examples of their use. here, here here, here, here, and here, here and here. 

They are:
- We have to pay competitive rates
- We have to pay enough to retain at least competent executives, given how hard it is to be an executive
- Our executives are not merely competitive, but brilliant (and have to be to do such a difficult job).

Yet as we discussed recently, these talking points are easily debunked.  Additionally, rarely do those who mouth the talking points in support of a particular leader provide any evidence to support their applicability to that leader.

But since May, 2016, we have steadily accumulated more stories about million-dollar plus pay for CEOs and other top managers of non-profit hospitals and hospital systems.  The reports may be shorter than they used to be, as journalism comes under economic and other attack, and as more journalistic resources go to cover the current president.  Here are some examples, in chronologic order per the date of the published article, rather telegraphically.

Examples of High Executive Pay

Boston, Massachusetts area, August, 2016 (Per the Boston Business Journal)

Brigham and Women's Hospital CEO Dr Elizabeth Nabel, total compensation $5.5 million in 2014, 20% higher than 2013.  Talking points =  brilliant: "committed to retaining a team of top professionals," per Edward Lawrence, Chair, Partners Board of Trustees

Tufts Medical CEO Dr Michael Wagner, $1.1 million, 82% increase.

UMass Memorial Medical Center CEO Dr Eric Dickson, $1.6 million, 74% increase, Patrick Muldoon, President UMass Memorial Center's biggest hospital, $1.2 million, 67% increase

West New York State, August, 2016 (Per the Buffalo News)

Catholic Health System CEO Joseph D McDonald, $1.4 million.

Roswell Park Cancer Institute CEO Candace S Johnson, $1 million

Kaleida Health CEO Jody L Lomeo, $1 million:

Talking points = brilliant "few executives have the required skill set and experience to fill these posts"

New Jersey, September, 2016 (Per NJ Advance Media)

Top 10 hospital CEOs received total compensation from $1.94 million to $4.7 million

New Orleans, Lousisiana, September, 2016 (Per the Times-Picayune)

Ochsner Health System former CEO and board chair Dr Patrick Quinlan, $3.3 million in 2014, current CEO and board member Warner Thomas, $1.49 million.  Talking points = competitive rates and brilliant: "we must compete nationally to recruit top talent"

Touro Infirmary CEO James Montgomery, $1.3 million

Children's Hospital Inc Chief Medical Officer Alan Robson, $1.26 million

General talking points = competitive rates: "you're looking to attract hospital executives from Californai or New York where they're paid a lot of money"

Gastonia, North Carolina, February, 2017 (Per the Gaston Gazette)

CaroMont CEO Doug Luckett, $1.03 million in 2015.  Talking points = retain and brilliant "paying what it takes to ensure they attract and retain top-level talent that can help provide premiums health care"

Dayton, Ohio, March, 2017 (Per the Dayton Daily News)

Kettering Health System CEO Fred Manchur, $1.65 million in 2015, former president Terri Day, $1.23 million, current president Roy Chew, $1.07 million

Premier Health former CEO James Pancoast, $1.42 milllion (excluding retirement payments) in 2015. Talking points = brilliant "you've got one person at the top who's trying to provide oversight, direction, and strategy.  At the same time, health care continues to grow in scope, complexity, regulation, and compliance."

York County, Pennsylvania, April, 2017 (Per the York Daily Record)

WellSpan Health president Kevin Mosser, $1.6 million in 2014.  Talking points = competitive rates Forrest Brisco, associate professor, Penn State Smeal College of Business, "nonprofit hospitals are competing with for-profit hospitals"; brilliant: "If you are at the top of a health care organization, you're going to have pay that's higher than many members of the organization. The the skill and knowledge to understand and interact with surgeons and physicians can command a high salary" [ed note: which often seems higher than those of some surgeons and physicians, though]; also brilliant: Robert Batory, senior vice-president and chief human resources officer, Wellspan, "Kevin has 24/7 responsibility for Wellspan."

Ephrata Community Hospital (WellSpan subsidiary) CEO  and WellSpan Medical Group (WellSpan subisidiary) CEO  "more than $1 million"

Winston-Salem, North Carolina, May, 2017 (Per the Winston-Salem Journal)

Novant Health Inc CEO Carl Armato, $1.31 million in 2015.  Talking points = retain and brilliant "high compensation levels are necessary to recruit and retain executive to run a 'very complex organization'"

Tri-Cities region, Tennessee and Virginia, June, 2017 (Per WJHL)

Wellmont Health System CEO Bart Hove, $1.4 million in 2015.  Talking points = competitive rates: Wellmont board of trustees chair Roger Leonard, "we have to compete on a national level and we're competing not just with other non-profits, but we're competing with other for-profits"

Mountain States Health Alliance CEO Alan Levine, $1.3 million in 2015. Talking points = competitive rates: HSHA board of trustees chair Barbara Allen, "make sure CEO pay is comparable to similarly sized facilities across the country with similar complexities"; retain and brilliant, "we want to attract the best talent ... and be able to retain him."

Connecticut, June, 2017 (Per the Connecticut Post)

Yale New Haven Health System CEO Marna Borgstrom, $3.8 million in 2015.  Nine other employees paid over $1 million, including Bridgeport Hospital CEO William Jennings, $1.5 million, Greenwich Hospital CEO Norman Roth, $1.3 million.  Talking points = brilliant: Yale senior vice president of public affairs, "Yale New Haven Health is the largest and most complex health system in the state."

Also, a total of 39 people, including the above, received over $1 million in 2016.

General talking points = brilliant: "there are a limited number of executives experienced enough to guide a state-of-the-art hospital and growing healthcare system in an increasingly competitive and complex industry"; competitive rates: "pay and benefits for such executives need to be comparable to what they could receive at another leading national hospital system or another industry"  
  
Summary and Conclusions

The current inflamed discussion of "Obamacare" and Republican attempts to "repeal and replace" it focuses on the costs of care and how they affect individual patients.  Examples include concerns about health insurance premiums that are or could be unaffordable for the typical person; insurance that fails to cover many costs, and thus may leave patients at risk of bankruptcy due to severe illness; poor people unable to or who might become unable to obtain any insurance, and perhaps any health care.  Yet there is little discussion of what really drives high and ever increasing health care costs (while quality of health care remains mediocre).

That may be because those who are benefiting the most from the status quo want to prevent discussion of their role.  There are many such people, but top management of non-profit hospitals provide a ready example.  Their institutions' mission is to provide care to sick patients.  Many such hospitals specifically pledge to provide care to the poor, vulnerable, and disadvantaged.  Non-profit hospitals have no owners or stockholders to whom they owe revenue.

Yet these days the top executives of non-profit hospitals receive enough money to become rich.

See the examples above. 

The justification for such compensation is pretty thin.  Consider the talking points above.  Apparently hospitals are extremely concerned about paying top management enough to recruit and retain them.  Yet there is much less evident concern about paying a lot of money to recruit and retain the health care professionals who actually take care of patients to fulfil the hospitals' mission.  Hospital CEOs are frequently proclaimed to be brilliant, visionaries, or at least incredibly hard workers with very complex jobs.  I wonder if those who make such proclamations have any idea what it takes to be a good physician or a good nurse.  Yet such health care professionals' hard work, long training, devotion to duty, and ability to deal with trying situations and make hard decisions rarely inspire hospitals to shower them with money.

Furthermore, hospital CEO compensation is almost never justified in terms of their ability to uphold and advance the fundamental hospital mission, taking care of sick people.  The articles above do not contain any justifications of generous CEO compensation based on hospitals' clinical performance or health care outcomes.  At best, hospital executive pay seems to be justified by the hospitals' financial, not clinical performance.

So why do non-profit hospital CEOs get paid enough to become rich?  Apparently, because they can.

As we discussed here, there is a strong argument that huge executive compensation is more a function of executives' political influence within the organization than their brilliance or the likelihood they are likely to be fickle and jump ship for even bigger pay.  This influence is partially generated by their control over their institutions' marketers, public relations flacks, and lawyers.  It is partially generated by their control over the make up of the boards of trustees who are supposed to exert governance, especially when these boards are subject to conflicts of interest and  are stacked with hired managers of other organizations.

Furthermore, such pay may provide perverse incentives to grow hospital systems to achieve market domination, raise charges, and increase administrative bloat.  As an op-ed in US News and World Report put it about executive pay in general,

But the executive pay decisions made inside corporate boardrooms have an enormous impact in the outside world. Outrageous pay gives top executives an incentive to behave outrageously. To hit the pay jackpot, they'll do most anything. They'll outsource and downsize and make all sorts of reckless decisions that pump up the short-term corporate bottom line at the expense of long-term prosperity and stability.

So I get to recycle my conclusions from many previous posts....

We will not make any progress reducing current health care dysfunction if we cannot have an honest conversation about what causes it and who profits from it.  In a democracy, we depend on journalists and the news media to provide the information needed to inform such a discussion.  When the news media becomes an outlet for  propaganda in support of the status quo, the anechoic effect is magnified, honest discussion is inhibited, and out democracy is further damaged.

True health care reform requires publicizing who benefits most from the current dysfunction, and how and why.  But it is painfully obvious that the people who have gotten so rich from the current status quo will use every tool at their disposal, paying for them with the money they have extracted from patients and taxpayers, to defend their position.  It will take grit, persistence, and courage to persevere in the cause of better health for patients and the public. 


And for our musical interlude, the beginning of "For the Love of Money," sung by the O'Jays, used in the official intro of season 2 of guess what show?