Workforce spending remained hospitals’ top expense in 2025, representing 60% of total expenses, according to the American Hospital Association. Workforce costs rose 5.6% in 2025 as hospitals continued increasing wages and investing in recruitment and retention efforts for nurses, physicians…
Compensation Issues
“Peanut butter raises” — or across-the-board pay increases spread thinly among employees — have come into question in 2026, The New York Times reported May 10. The term began popping up most recently after a compensation data company’s report found…
Health insurance leaders were paid at least 206 times more than their respective median employee in 2025, according to recently filed proxy statements. UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen Hemsley was an outlier, getting paid 748 times more than the company’s median…
Physician compensation is increasingly tied to productivity, with the vast majority of physicians now eligible for incentive-based pay, according to Medscape’s “2026 Physician Compensation Report.“ Six things to know: 1. Incentive pay is now nearly universal. About 85% of physicians…
The CEOs of four major for-profit health systems earned a combined $90.5 million in total compensation in 2025, with bonus structures behind those packages that provided an inside look at the distinct philosophies of what performance looks like at the…
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Orthopedics and plastic surgery have traded the top two spots in Medscape’s annual Physician Compensation Report every year since 2021, with orthopedics seeing compensation climb by more than $80,000 over that span. Orthopedic surgeons now command an average of $611,000…
Gaps in pay between male and female physicians persist despite the fact that the number of women in U.S. medical training programs recently lapped that of men. Disparities in compensation look different across specialties, regions and other demographics, but female…
Radiology and orthopedics tied for the specialties that lead to the highest net worth, an April 24 Medscape report found. Medscape’s 2026 “Physician Wealth and Debt Report” surveyed 5,916 physicians across more than 29 specialties between Sept. 5 and Dec.…
Female ophthalmologists who work in academic settings earn less than their male counterparts at all ranks, according to new research published March 26 in JAMA Ophthalmology. Researchers at Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn., utilized data from…
Compensation for physician assistants varies widely by state, with California and Nevada reporting the highest median PA income in 2024 at $145,000, according to the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants’ 2024 Statistical Profile of Board Certified PAs by…