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Employee compensation accounts for roughly half of expenses for most hospitals. Obviously, paying employees too much can put a hospital in serious financial jeopardy. But paying below the fair market value of employees can be as financially devastating to a hospital as paying too much- leading to high turnover, difficulty hiring and recruiting the best candidates, staffing shortages, and employee relations problems. These problems are more than just a headache for your marketing and human resources (HR) departments-they mean additional costs that easily can exceed the cost of simply paying competitively in the first place.