Healthcare Insights
Top 20 hospitals by highest accrued salary expense
The increasing cost of labor at U.S. hospitals continues to be one of the biggest trends in healthcare.
How much do hospitals spend on employee salaries each year?
According to financial data from our HospitalView product, the average amount that a hospital paid in employee salaries increased by 46% between 2011 and 2020 — from $67.1 million to $97.8 million.
Individual hospital salary expenses ranged from $250k a year to more than $3 billion, with a median value of $46.2 million in 2020. The annual average increase in spend was 4.4%. In comparison, total hospital operating expenses increased at about four percent year-over-year. These costs have risen in recent years, as the Covid-19 pandemic led to increased rates of physician burnout that culminated in staffing shortages across the the country. Hospitals and health systems continue to address these shortages through increased utilization of contract labor
The following table lists the hospitals with the highest accrued salary expenses, according to 2020 data from approximately 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 | $3,396,938,625 | Explore |
| 2 | 3120 | Cleveland Clinic Main Campus | Cleveland, OH | $2,606,390,970 | Explore |
| 3 | 3742 | Vanderbilt University Medical Center | Nashville, TN | $2,299,701,848 | Explore |
| 4 | 273024 | Montefiore Hospital - Moses Campus | Bronx, NY | $2,204,079,685 | Explore |
| 5 | 2843 | Tisch Hospital | New York, NY | $2,147,992,042 | Explore |
| 6 | 1973 | Massachusetts General Hospital | Boston, MA | $1,791,330,334 | Explore |
| 7 | 588 | Stanford Hospital | Stanford, CA | $1,759,594,046 | Explore |
| 8 | 560 | UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center at Parnassus Heights | San Francisco, CA | $1,611,636,807 | Explore |
| 9 | 2828 | Long Island Jewish Medical Center | New Hyde Park, NY | $1,608,337,734 | Explore |
| 10 | 2824 | North Shore University Hospital | Manhasset, NY | $1,593,870,687 | Explore |
| 11 | 430 | Cedars-Sinai Medical Center | Los Angeles, CA | $1,477,422,406 | Explore |
| 12 | 2096 | University Hospital | Ann Arbor, MI | $1,397,002,568 | Explore |
| 13 | 873 | AdventHealth Orlando (FKA Florida Hospital Orlando) | Orlando, FL | $1,323,532,244 | Explore |
| 14 | 2837 | Mount Sinai Medical Center (AKA the Mount Sinai Hospital) | New York, NY | $1,234,023,618 | Explore |
| 15 | 1969 | Brigham and Womens Hospital | Boston, MA | $1,197,414,116 | Explore |
| 16 | 731 | Yale New Haven Hospital | New Haven, CT | $1,171,748,114 | Explore |
| 17 | 3975 | John Sealy Hospital | Galveston, TX | $1,171,334,451 | Explore |
| 18 | 515 | University of California Davis Medical Center (AKA UC Davis Medical Center) | Sacramento, CA | $1,169,697,061 | Explore |
| 19 | 596 | Santa Clara Valley Medical Center | San Jose, CA | $1,161,859,674 | Explore |
| 20 | 774 | Memorial Regional Hospital | Hollywood, FL | $1,142,377,788 | Explore |
Fig. 1 - Data is from the Definitive Healthcare HospitalView product. Data is sourced from the Medicare Cost Report. The most recent data is through Q4 2020 and new data is released quarterly. Accessed June 2022.
Which hospitals have the highest employee salary expenses?
NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, NY spent more than $3.3 billion on salary expenses in 2020. Next, the Cleveland Clinic campus in Cleveland, OH spent $2.6 billion and Vanderbilt University Medical Center spent $2.3 billion on salary expenses.
Not surprisingly, eleven 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.
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