NC State Treasurer calls out non-profit hospitals over exec pay, keeps pressure on HCA’s Mission Health — the “500 pound gorilla in Western North Carolina”

A new report from the North Carolina Treasurer’s Office on North Carolina nonprofit hospital executives’ pay reveals that healthcare CEOs are making millions with raises. 

Though the report mostly focuses on non-profit hospitals, it specifically calls out HCA for raising prices in North Carolina, pledging exec pay cuts through the pandemic and then giving a large raise to CEO Sam Hazen, and opposing a shareholder proposal to increase the role of quality metrics in determining exec compensation.  

“The people who are suffering are the people of western North Carolina who are experiencing lower quality and higher costs,” Folwell told ABC News 13. (Related: Ongoing class-action antitrust lawsuits against Mission, alleging HCA operates a monopoly that is raising prices and decreasing quality of care)