hcrenewal | Inflated executive compensation in health care is rarely challenged, but when it is, the
responses are formulaic. Justifications are usually made by public relations
flacks who are accountable to these executives, or the executives'
cronies on their boards of trustees. As I wrote in 2015,
and in May, 2016, It seems nearly every attempt made to defend the outsize compensation
given hospital and health system executives involves the same arguments,
thus suggesting they were authored as public relations talking points. Additional examples appear here, here here, here, here, and here, here and here.
The talking points are:
- We have to pay competitive rates
- We have to pay enough to retain at least competent executives, given how hard it is to be an executive
- Our executives are not merely competitive, but brilliant (and have to be to do such a difficult job).
Yet the examples above suggest that the work of a top health care manager hardly is as difficult as that of a health care professional. And as we have discussed, these talking points are otherwise easily debunked. But that certainly has not stopped executive compensation from rising year after year.
The plutocratic compensation given leaders of non-profit hospitals is usually justified by the need to competitively pay exceptionally brilliant leaders who must do extremely difficult jobs. Yet even leaders whose records seem to be the opposite of brilliance, or whose work does not seem very hard, often end up handsomely rewarded.
Other aspects of top health care managers' pay provide perverse incentives. While ostensibly tied to hospitals' economic performance, their compensation is rarely tied to clinical performance, health care outcomes, health care quality, or patients' safety. Furthermore, how managers are paid seems wildly out of step with how other organizational employees, especially health care professionals, are paid.
Exalted pay of hospital managers occurred after managers largely supplanted health care professionals as leaders of health care organizations. This is part of a societal wave of "managerialism." Most organizations are now run by generic managers, rather than people familiar with the particulars of the organizations' work.
That CEOs would view the minor travails of bureaucratic life as so significant suggests how deep they are within their managerialist bubbles, and how little they understand and relate to what their organizations actually are supposed to do, provide health care on the ground to real patients.
Rather than putting patient care first, paying generic managers enough to make them rich now seems to be the leading goal of hospitals. I postulate that managerialism is a major reason the US health care system costs much more than that of any other developed country, while providing mediocre access and health care quality.
Improving the situation might first require changing regulation of executive compensation practices in hospitals, improving its oversight, and making hospital boards of trustees more accountable. But that would be just a few small steps in the right direction
True health care reform might require something more revolutionary, the reversal of the managers' coup d'etat, returning leadership of health care to health care professionals who actually care about patients and put their and the public's health first, ahead of their personal gain. Of course, that might not be possible without a societal revolution to separate managers from the levers of power in government, industry, and non-profit organizations. Remember the most salient example of managerialism now for most people in the US is a an executive with a Wharton business degree as the President of the United States.
The talking points are:
- We have to pay competitive rates
- We have to pay enough to retain at least competent executives, given how hard it is to be an executive
- Our executives are not merely competitive, but brilliant (and have to be to do such a difficult job).
Yet the examples above suggest that the work of a top health care manager hardly is as difficult as that of a health care professional. And as we have discussed, these talking points are otherwise easily debunked. But that certainly has not stopped executive compensation from rising year after year.
The plutocratic compensation given leaders of non-profit hospitals is usually justified by the need to competitively pay exceptionally brilliant leaders who must do extremely difficult jobs. Yet even leaders whose records seem to be the opposite of brilliance, or whose work does not seem very hard, often end up handsomely rewarded.
Other aspects of top health care managers' pay provide perverse incentives. While ostensibly tied to hospitals' economic performance, their compensation is rarely tied to clinical performance, health care outcomes, health care quality, or patients' safety. Furthermore, how managers are paid seems wildly out of step with how other organizational employees, especially health care professionals, are paid.
Exalted pay of hospital managers occurred after managers largely supplanted health care professionals as leaders of health care organizations. This is part of a societal wave of "managerialism." Most organizations are now run by generic managers, rather than people familiar with the particulars of the organizations' work.
That CEOs would view the minor travails of bureaucratic life as so significant suggests how deep they are within their managerialist bubbles, and how little they understand and relate to what their organizations actually are supposed to do, provide health care on the ground to real patients.
Rather than putting patient care first, paying generic managers enough to make them rich now seems to be the leading goal of hospitals. I postulate that managerialism is a major reason the US health care system costs much more than that of any other developed country, while providing mediocre access and health care quality.
Improving the situation might first require changing regulation of executive compensation practices in hospitals, improving its oversight, and making hospital boards of trustees more accountable. But that would be just a few small steps in the right direction
True health care reform might require something more revolutionary, the reversal of the managers' coup d'etat, returning leadership of health care to health care professionals who actually care about patients and put their and the public's health first, ahead of their personal gain. Of course, that might not be possible without a societal revolution to separate managers from the levers of power in government, industry, and non-profit organizations. Remember the most salient example of managerialism now for most people in the US is a an executive with a Wharton business degree as the President of the United States.
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