Corporate executives of multi-site long-term care organizations banked an average raise of 3.7% in 2023, according to a new report issued Wednesday.
That’s a small increase from the 3.2% average bump in 2022, the Hospital & Healthcare Compensation Service reported in issuing its 2023-2024 Multi-Facility Corporate Compensation Report.
The study covers pay for executives with oversight over multiple nursing homes, CCRCs, independent living or assisted living/personal care communities, and high-revenue single site providers. In all, 88 companies provided salary data.
Among long-term care providers, the highest total compensation went to chief executive officers with revenues of $100 million or more, who brought in average total compensation of $822,507. That’s nearly twice the total compensation for CEOs of companies with revenues of $40 million to $99.9 million ($456,499) and those heading companies with revenues under $40 million ($439,768).
Much of the difference can be attributed to the return of healthy bonuses. After years in the 20% to 30% range, bonuses for CEOs of the highest-grossing provider organizations averaged 54.6% for 2023-24.
“Given the range of players in that tier, the high bonuses make complete sense,” Rosanne Zabka, director of reports for HCS, told McKnight’s Long-Term Care News Wednesday.
Lower bonuses representing 16.6% and 23.8% of salary among lower revenue groups brought the average CEO bonus to 40% for the year.
Forty percent of the long-term care organizations participating said they had short-term incentive plans for their CEOs. HCS said survey respondents reported the metrics they used to determine actual bonus amounts included, in order of importance, operating margin and income; revenue growth; quality metrics; and employee turnover.
Across all revenue categories, multi-site long-term care CEOs collected an average salary of $487,729, followed by chief medical officers at $332,412 and chief operating officers at $283,645. Not enough data for chief medical officers was available to report by revenue category, meaning the average pay may have been skewed by higher-revenue companies.
Raises appear to be in a sustained recovery period following a dip to as low as 2.7% in 2021, added HCS’s Rich Cioffe.
“We’re seeing executive compensation and bonuses on the rise again, across all of our reports published in 2023, especially compared to 2020-2022,” he said. “As healthcare providers were facing critical workforce challenges during COVID, many prioritized allocating budgets towards frontline worker pay raises along with sign-on bonuses to address retention and recruitment issues. As turnover began trending downward and these staffing challenges eased, management was able to resume salary increases/larger bonuses for executives as seen prior to COVID.”
All participants included in the 2023-2024 survey also offered 401(k)/403(b) plans, and participants reported an average match of 3.9% of salary, with an average maximum contribution of 4.7%, a decrease from last year’s average match of 4.2% of salary and average maximum contribution of 4.8%.
The complete 90-page report also includes information from multi-site hospital systems and home health organizations. It includes more details on fringe benefits and is available for purchase from HCS.
