It should be no surprise that revenue-generating-machine Banner Health continues to pay its CEO a record salary, while simultaneously deciding not to spend money on patient safety initiatives. Banner, which is the second largest employer in the state of Arizona, is also a growing business center. They purport to be a non-profit (for tax purposes), but the money the company generates is astronomical. The AZCentral.com article shows that most nonprofit CEOs “earn between $90,000 and $250,000 on average.” That is in stark contrast to the average nonprofit hospital CEO, who makes nearly $700,000. Banner Health’s CEO puts that number to shame, collecting over $12 million a year! This number is approximately 4 times more than the next highest-paid hospital CEO from Phoenix Children’s Hospital. The full list of top earners can be found here:
Banner Health (Peter Fine) — $12.4 million (up 10% from 2019)
Phoenix Children’s Hospital (Bob Meyer) — $3.3 million (up 13% from 2019)
Yuma Regional Medical Center (Dr. Robert Trenschel) — $2.6 million (up by 94% from 2019)*
Dignity Health in Arizona (Linda Hunt) — $2.1 million (up by 13% from 2019)*
HonorHealth (Todd LaPorte) — $1.9 million (decrease of 1% from 2019)
Mayo Clinic in Arizona (Dr. Richard Gray) — $1.8 million (up by 26% from 2020)
TMC Health (Judy Rich) — $1.5 million (decrease of 2% from 2019)
Valleywise Health (Steve Purves) — $897,896 (up by 29% from 2019)
Northern Arizona Healthcare (Florence Spyrow) — $796,381 (decrease of 5% from 2020)*
Kingman Healthcare Inc. (William “Will” McConnell) — $524,215 (decrease of 32% from former CEO’s compensation in 2019)*
Generally speaking, there is not a problem with high-earning businesses handsomely rewarding their CEOs with lavish compensation packages. The issue, however, is that Banner Health continues to make patient safety a distant priority. As the old saying goes, when business put profits over safety, bad things will happen. As Banner continues to expand its presence throughout Arizona, the cases of medical malpractice against it also continue to pile up.
