Registered nurses in California earn the highest median pay in the country, while nurses in Alabama earn the least, according to data released May 15 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Below are the median hourly and annual wages for…
Compensation Issues
Health system executives are navigating reimbursement pressures, high labor costs and workforce workforce challenges, and new benchmarking data shows how their own compensation is moving against that backdrop. Gallagher, which maintains one of the nation’s largest proprietary healthcare compensation databases,…
Provider compensation continued to rise in 2025, but a new survey suggests health systems may be nearing the limits of what they can sustainably support. According to the “AMGA 2026 Medical Group Compensation and Productivity Survey,” overall clinical compensation increased…
Marc Casper, CEO of Thermo Fisher Scientific, is the highest-paid healthcare CEO among S&P 500 companies, The Wall Street Journal reported June 22. Median CEO pay at S&P 500 companies reached a new high in 2025 at nearly $18 million,…
Virginia residents have the highest income of any U.S. state when balancing median income, income among the top 5% of earners and income among the bottom 20%, according to a June 2 ranking from WalletHub. While the median annual income…
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Greensboro, N.C.-based Cone Health has raised its minimum wage to $18 an hour, a move that affects more than 4,200 employees across the health system. The increase, which took effect earlier in May, also includes wage adjustments for employees earning…
Are “peanut butter raises” — across-the-board pay increases spread thinly across employees — a good idea in health systems? Some leaders are skeptical. While compensation experts argue it sends the wrong signal to high performers, the practice appears common. A…
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…
“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…