US nonprofit hospital CEO annual pay averages $600K

Heads of U.S. nonprofit hospitals earn an average of almost $600,000 a year, compensation that isn't tied to quality measures such as mortality rates, a Harvard University study found. The chief executive officers paid the most oversee larger, urban hospitals that are usually teaching institutions and have a median salary of more than $1.66 million, according to research published today in JAMA Internal Medicine. The top executives paid the least – a median of $117,933 – are most often at small, non-teaching facilities in rural areas. The findings are among the first to detail how much nonprofit hospital CEOs are paid and the variations in salaries, said Ashish Jha, the study's senior author.