Healthcare Insights
Hospitals with the highest salary expenses
Hospital salaries for physicians, nurses, executives, and staff are one of the biggest expense categories for hospitals.
These costs have risen in recent years, especially as the Covid-19 pandemic led to increased rates of physician burnout that culminated in staffing shortages across the country. Hospitals and health systems continue to address these shortages through increased utilization of contract labor.
Hospital financial data points like salary and contract labor help staffing and recruiting companies to better target healthcare organization prospects and be able to identify new opportunities in their markets.
How much do hospitals spend on employee salaries each year?
According to financial data from our HospitalView product, the average hospital salary expense was $113 million in 2022, the most recent full year of data available. Individual hospital salary expenses ranged from $250k a year to more than $3 billion, with a median value of $51.2 million.
Hospital salary expenses increased by about 5% on average each year between 2018 and 2022. In comparison, total hospital operating expenses increased at about 7% in the same timeframe.
The following table lists the U.S. hospitals with the highest accrued salary expenses, according to 2022 data from more than 3,700 U.S. hospitals.
| Rank | Definitive ID | Hospital name | Location | Total salary expense | Explore dataset |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 541974 | NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center | New York, NY | $3,728,652,302 | Explore |
| 2 | 3120 | Cleveland Clinic Main Campus | Cleveland, OH | $3,114,335,709 | Explore |
| 3 | 2843 | Tisch Hospital | New York, NY | $2,504,008,772 | Explore |
| 4 | 273024 | Montefiore Hospital - Moses Campus | Bronx, NY | $2,413,796,263 | Explore |
| 5 | 3742 | Vanderbilt University Medical Center | Nashville, TN | $2,322,605,075 | Explore |
| 6 | 588 | Stanford Hospital - 300 Pasteur Dr | Stanford, CA | $2,186,201,187 | Explore |
| 7 | 560 | UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center at Parnassus Heights | San Francisco, CA | $2,076,114,114 | Explore |
| 8 | 1973 | Massachusetts General Hospital | Boston, MA | $2,014,997,752 | Explore |
| 9 | 2828 | Long Island Jewish Medical Center | New Hyde Park, NY | $1,899,706,472 | Explore |
| 10 | 873 | AdventHealth Orlando | Orlando, FL | $1,813,697,538 | Explore |
| 11 | 2824 | North Shore University Hospital | Manhasset, NY | $1,804,105,884 | Explore |
| 12 | 430 | Cedars-Sinai Medical Center | Los Angeles, CA | $1,711,659,223 | Explore |
| 13 | 2096 | University Hospital | Ann Arbor, MI | $1,667,857,204 | Explore |
| 14 | 515 | University of California Davis Medical Center | Sacramento, CA | $1,504,787,636 | Explore |
| 15 | 3003 | Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center | Charlotte, NC | $1,440,374,743 | Explore |
| 16 | 774 | Memorial Regional Hospital | Hollywood, FL | $1,438,739,500 | Explore |
| 17 | 596 | Santa Clara Valley Medical Center | San Jose, CA | $1,407,865,553 | Explore |
| 18 | 3975 | John Sealy Hospital | Galveston, TX | $1,359,863,591 | Explore |
| 19 | 845 | Jackson Memorial Hospital | Miami, FL | $1,355,061,129 | Explore |
| 20 | 1969 | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Boston, MA | $1,352,764,859 | Explore |
Fig. 1 Data is from the Definitive Healthcare HospitalView product. Data is sourced from the Medicare Cost Report. Accessed May 2024.
Which hospitals have the highest employee salary expenses?
NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City spent more than $3.7 billion on hospital salary expenses in 2022. Next, the Cleveland Clinic spent $3.1 billion and Tisch Hospital spent $2.5 billion on salary expenses. These three hospitals are also the top three hospitals in the U.S. by net patient revenue and are leading academic medical centers.
Not surprisingly, 10 of the top 20 hospitals with the highest salary expenses in the United States are located in California or New York. This directly correlates to both state’s population size and high cost of living.
Learn more
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