AAPC recently released its 2012 Health Care Salary Survey of healthcare billers, coders, practice managers, auditors and educators, and put the data in a five-year perspective of progress from 2008 to 2012.
Compensation Issues
Since 2004, Kimberly Boynton has overseen the financial operations of Crouse Hospital in Syracuse, N.Y. — a 506-bed hospital with an annual operating budget of roughly $320 million.
Vanessa Kochevar has served as CFO of Deaconess Hospital in Oklahoma City for roughly one-and-a-half years, and she has already been recognized for fiscal prowess.
Over the course of their lifetime, specialist physicians earn roughly $2.8 million more, on average, than primary care physicians, according to a study from the University of California Davis Health System in Sacramento.
Laurie Eldridge has been the CFO of Marshall Medical Center in Placerville, Calif., for the past nine years, and during that span, she has helped stabilize the hospital's finances, which has helped MMC remain independent.
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Pulmonologists earned an average salary of $242,000 in 2011, slightly more than 2010 and still close to the median of all physician specialty salaries, according to Medscape's "Pulmonologist Compensation Report: 2012 Results."
Since 1991, Chuck Robb has been with Saint Luke's Health System, based in Kansas City, Mo., and he has been CFO of the organization — one of the largest health systems in the Kansas City area — since 1999.
Scott McKinnon, CEO of Memorial Hospital in North Conway, N.H., made roughly $280,000 in 2010, far less than what his predecessor made, according to a Conway Daily Sun report.
Short-term incentives are still a very popular component of executive pay programs, as roughly 80 percent of hospitals and health systems use them, according to Integrated Healthcare Strategies' 2012 National Healthcare Leadership Compensation Survey.
Few healthcare CFOs have to deal with the size and scope of an organization like Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, which has roughly $2.5 billion in revenue, and Edward Prunchunas has been doing it for almost 15 years.