As Economy Rebounds, Cost of Healthcare Workers Rises

“These organizations are making significant investments now, whether it’s through their IT structures or their integrated network of physicians and ambulatory surgical centers,” he says. “These investments are not things that pay off in one year. These organizations are looking to the future. They have grappled with the management on a year-to-year basis and what these boards are recognizing is that an annual incentive plan doesn’t measure transformation.”

And while it wasn’t covered in the Hay Group survey, Seifert says healthcare senior leaders better get used to public scrutiny of their compensation. “Don’t expect it to wane until the economy picks up,” he says. “The average person can’t appreciate how much value an executive brings to an organization in a way that would cause them to be paid $400,000 or $500,000. It is something we could not explain to them no matter how much logic we use.”