Medical Design and Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • Med Tech Resources
    • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • The Big 100
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Video
  • 2022 Leadership in MedTech
    • 2022 Leadership Voting!
    • 2021 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
  • Women in Medtech

Why Quality Doesn’t Affect Hospital CEO Pay

November 19, 2013 By Ashish Jha, MD, MPH

In my previous blog, I made the argument that whatever strategy we use to improve care in hospitals will not be implemented and executed well without proper focus by hospital leadership.  So, it is in this context, that we recently published some pretty disappointing findings that are worth reflecting on.

We examined the pay of CEOs across U.S. hospitals and found that some CEOs got paid a lot more than others.  This was not surprising.  CEOs of larger, urban, teaching hospitals get paid a lot more than CEOs of small, rural, non-teaching institutions.  But the disappointment was around quality:  we found no relationship between a hospital’s quality performance and the pay of the CEO.

Holding size, teaching, and other factors constant, what was the pay of CEOs of hospitals with high mortality rates?  About the same as CEOs of hospitals with low mortality rates.  What about other quality measures?  Most of them didn’t really seem to matter, with the exception of patient experience, which correlated nicely with CEO compensation.  It seems that when setting CEO compensation, patient outcomes are not a big part of the discussion.  How could this be, and why does it matter?

How you set incentives for senior managers says a lot about your priorities.  Boards generally set the salary for their CEOs and they clearly reward patient satisfaction scores.  That’s good.  They also seem to reward the things that build hospital reputations: having the latest technology such as a PET scanner or academic status.  But are boards rewarding CEOs based on mortality rates or adherence to basic quality metrics?  Not so much.  Why not?  I’ve spoken to a lot of board chairpersons over the years and the answer is not that they don’t care.  Most boards want to reward quality and believe that they do.

The problem is that most board members lack sufficient expertise on quality metrics and can’t decipher, from the large number of quality metrics, which ones are important (like mortality rates) and which ones are not.  Hamstrung, they focus on satisfaction but also end up rewarding things that feel like proxies for quality, such as having the latest technology.  And here’s the part that’s frustrating — our national efforts on quality measurement and improvement are not helping.  We seem to have done very little to prioritize what’s really important, and shine a light on them.

So what do we do to move forward?  Some states have started requiring that boards undergo training in quality.  Medicare, as a condition of participation, could certainly require that boards (or at least some members thereof) show a degree of expertise with quality.  I like these ideas but worry that training programs would themselves be of variable quality, and for some boards it would become an onerous requirement without achieving real gains in expertise.

Continue reading…

Related Articles Read More >

Avail Medsystems
How Avail Medsystems seeks to create a connected OR experience
Engineer inspecting artificial hip joint parts in quality control department in orthopaedic factory
Deburring and finishing for beautiful, functional medical devices
FDA logo
FDA seeking innovations to move beyond heater-cooler device problems
Logos of Creo Medical and Intuitive
Creo Medical inks collaboration agreement with Intuitive

DeviceTalks Weekly.

July 1, 2022
Boston Scientific CEO Mike Mahoney on building a corporate culture that drives high growth results
See More >

MDO Digital Edition

Digital Edition

Subscribe to Medical Design & Outsourcing. Bookmark, share and interact with the leading medical design engineering magazine today.

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.
DeviceTalks

DeviceTalks is a conversation among medical technology leaders. It's events, podcasts, webinars and one-on-one exchanges of ideas & insights.

DeviceTalks

New MedTech Resource

Medical Tubing

Enewsletter Subscriptions

Enewsletter Subscriptions

MassDevice

Mass Device

The Medical Device Business Journal. MassDevice is the leading medical device news business journal telling the stories of the devices that save lives.

Visit Website
MDO ad
Medical Design and Outsourcing
  • MassDevice
  • DeviceTalks
  • MedTech 100 Index
  • Medical Tubing + Extrusion
  • Drug Delivery Business News
  • Drug Discovery & Development
  • Pharmaceutical Processing World
  • R&D World
  • About Us/Contact
  • Advertise With Us
  • Subscribe to Print Magazine
  • Subscribe to E-newsletter
  • Attend our Monthly Webinars
  • Listen to our Weekly Podcasts
  • Join our DeviceTalks Tuesdays Discussion

Copyright © 2022 WTWH Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media LLC. Site Map | Privacy Policy | RSS

Search Medical Design & Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • Med Tech Resources
    • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • The Big 100
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Video
  • 2022 Leadership in MedTech
    • 2022 Leadership Voting!
    • 2021 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
  • Women in Medtech