Advocate Health
Eugene Woods · Charlotte, NC
- CEO pay
- $25.8M
- Nurse = 1 dot
- $90,620
284 years · 262 without earlier pay
Data story · hospital pay
The 200-Year Nurse
Nurse pay vs. hospital CEO pay
On This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #687, Theo Von told Zohran Mamdani that nurses “would have to work 200 years full-time” to make what some hospital CEOs make in one year. He named no hospital and no source. So I checked sixteen of the biggest systems: each CEO’s 2024 pay from the IRS filing, divided by what a registered nurse makes in the same city.
Oct 3, 20266 sources
284 years
A nurse at Advocate Health would work 284 years to earn the CEO’s 2024 pay.
Eugene Woods: $25.8M for calendar 2024, on Advocate Health’s Form 990. The median registered nurse in the Charlotte, NC metro: $90,620 a year (BLS, May 2025).
Theo’s 200 years, checked
Advocate Health, HCA Healthcare, NYU Langone, NewYork-PresbyterianTrue at 4 of 16: Advocate Health (284), HCA Healthcare (283), NYU Langone (253) and NewYork-Presbyterian (219). In New York it holds at 2 of 5.
At the three hospitals whose nurses struck in January: NewYork-Presbyterian (219), Montefiore (139) and Mount Sinai (46).
It holds only when you count everything. On base salary alone, no CEO here passes 84 years.
The ranking
Four clear 200 years. Two are in New York.
Each bar is a CEO’s 2024 pay divided by the median registered nurse’s yearly wage in the metro where the system has its headquarters. The dashed line is Theo’s 200.
The CEO side is calendar 2024, the newest year every filing covers. The nurse side is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May 2025 survey, the newest it publishes.
The outline is pay from earlier years. NewYork-Presbyterian’s is $11.5M of deferred pay that its earlier filings had already reported, paid out in 2024. Without it, Corwin’s 2024 is 124 nurse-years.
- Base salary
- Rest of the year’s pay (mostly bonus)
- Earlier years’ pay, paid out this year
- Nurses struck, January 2026
Hover or tab to a bar for the dollars.
How many years would a nurse work to earn one year of the CEO’s pay?CEO pay: calendar 2024, from each system’s 2024 Form 990 (HCA’s SEC proxy). Nurse pay: median for registered nurses in the headquarters metro, BLS, May 2025.
What’s in the pay
Half of it is bonus
Pooled, the fifteen nonprofit CEOs here were paid $208.4M for 2024. 26% was base salary. 50% was bonus and incentive pay, most of the ranking’s orange: $19.7M at NYU Langone alone, or 164 nurse-years.
The rest is other pay and benefits (15%: severance, payouts from retirement plans, perks) and retirement and deferred pay set aside for later (8%). Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic paid their CEOs no bonus at all.
Earlier years’ pay, the ranking’s outline, is not another kind of pay. It is deferred pay that earlier 990s already reported, vested or paid in 2024, and it sits inside these columns. HCA Healthcare files no 990: 70% of Hazen’s $23.8M was stock and options, valued when granted.
Hover or tab to a bar for the dollars and the Schedule J column.
What is a hospital CEO’s pay made of?Each nonprofit CEO’s calendar-2024 pay as shares of the total, by Schedule J column
- Base salary
- Bonus and incentive
- Other pay and benefits
- Retirement and deferred
Each system
One CEO year, counted in nurse-years
One dot is one year of a nurse’s pay: the median registered nurse in that city, May 2025. The whole grid is the CEO’s pay for 2024, twenty dots to a row, in the ranking’s colors. The dashed line is the 200th dot, Theo’s 200 years. Hover a panel for the dollars.
HCA HealthcareFor-profit
Samuel N. Hazen · Nashville, TN
- CEO pay
- $23.8M
- Nurse = 1 dot
- $84,040
283 years
NYU LangoneNYC
Robert I. Grossman, MD · New York, NY
- CEO pay
- $30.3M
- Nurse = 1 dot
- $119,720
253 years · 208 without earlier pay
NewYork-PresbyterianNYCStruck Jan ’26
Steven J. Corwin, MD · New York, NY
- CEO pay
- $26.3M
- Nurse = 1 dot
- $119,720
219 years · 124 without earlier pay
Ascension
Joseph R. Impicciche · St. Louis, MO
- CEO pay
- $14.1M
- Nurse = 1 dot
- $83,180
169 years
UPMC
Leslie C. Davis · Pittsburgh, PA
- CEO pay
- $13.3M
- Nurse = 1 dot
- $82,370
162 years · 150 without earlier pay
CommonSpirit
Wright Lassiter III · Chicago, IL
- CEO pay
- $14.2M
- Nurse = 1 dot
- $100,490
141 years
MontefioreNYCStruck Jan ’26
Philip O. Ozuah, MD, PhD · Bronx, NY
- CEO pay
- $16.7M
- Nurse = 1 dot
- $119,720
139 years
Cleveland Clinic
Tomislav Mihaljevic, MD · Cleveland, OH
- CEO pay
- $9.7M
- Nurse = 1 dot
- $83,940
116 years
Providence
Rod F. Hochman, MD · Renton, WA
- CEO pay
- $12.3M
- Nurse = 1 dot
- $128,260
96 years · 89 without earlier pay
Mass General Brigham
Anne Klibanski, MD · Somerville, MA
- CEO pay
- $9.2M
- Nurse = 1 dot
- $106,180
86 years
Trinity Health
Michael Slubowski · Livonia, MI
- CEO pay
- $7.3M
- Nurse = 1 dot
- $97,280
75 years
Kaiser Permanente
Gregory Adams · Oakland, CA
- CEO pay
- $13.0M
- Nurse = 1 dot
- $186,610
70 years
NorthwellNYC
Michael Dowling · New Hyde Park, NY
- CEO pay
- $5.9M
- Nurse = 1 dot
- $119,720
50 years
Mayo Clinic
Gianrico Farrugia, MD · Rochester, MN
- CEO pay
- $4.9M
- Nurse = 1 dot
- $101,660
48 years
Mount SinaiNYCStruck Jan ’26
Brendan Carr, MD · New York, NY
- CEO pay
- $5.5M
- Nurse = 1 dot
- $119,720
46 years
The fine print
200 years holds only if you count everything
A Form 990 total is more than a paycheck. It counts incentive pay, retirement contributions, benefits, and deferred pay from earlier years that vested or paid out this year. Take those away one at a time and the claim narrows.
The nurse matters too. Against a nurse at the 90th percentile in the same metro, it holds at 2. On salary alone it holds nowhere.
Where does 200 years still hold?One square per system, in ranking order; filled where it holds
| Everything on the filingTotal pay against the median nurse. | Advocate Health, HCA Healthcare, NYU Langone, NewYork-Presbyterian | 4 of 16 | Highest: Advocate Health, 284 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minus pay from earlier yearsDrops deferred pay that earlier 990s already reported, which vested or was paid out this year. | Advocate Health, HCA Healthcare, NYU Langone | 3 of 16 | Highest: HCA Healthcare, 283 |
| Against a top-10% nurseTotal pay against the 90th-percentile nurse in the same metro. | Advocate Health, HCA Healthcare | 2 of 16 | Highest: Advocate Health, 234 |
| Salary onlyBase salary against the median nurse. | None | 0 of 16 | Highest: Cleveland Clinic, 84 |
Method
How the numbers were built
Sixteen systems: five in New York, ten of the largest nonprofit systems in the country, and HCA, the largest for-profit, for comparison. One CEO each, one year of pay, one nurse wage.
- CEO pay is calendar 2024. It is Schedule J, Part II, column (E) of each system’s tax-year-2024 Form 990: pay from the filer plus its related organizations. Form 990 reports W-2 pay for the calendar year ending in the filer’s tax year, so June, August and September filers’ later returns still cover calendar 2024. Read from the IRS’s e-file XML; where more than one return reports the same CEO, every one shows the same total.
- The 990 lags. Returns are due months after the year ends, with extensions, and the IRS posts them later still. 2024 is the newest year all sixteen have; the last of these returns went up in 2026.
- The strike tag. Theo and Mamdani say they both went to “the nurses strike” without naming it. The one that began January 12, 2026 (about 15,000 nurses in the New York State Nurses Association at NewYork-Presbyterian, Montefiore and Mount Sinai) is the one Theo was at: on January 18, 2026, he posted from the picket line at Mount Sinai, holding a “More nurses, less millionaire exec$” sign. Of the three, it is where his 200 years fits least: 46 years.
- Total, not base. Column (E) adds bonus and incentive pay, other pay, retirement and deferred contributions, and nontaxable benefits to base salary. It also includes deferred pay that earlier 990s already reported (column F), which counts the same dollars in two years. The fine print shows the claim with and without it.
- The nurse. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, registered nurses (29-1141), annual median for the headquarters metro, May 2025: the release the BLS API serves. That is a year newer than the CEO pay; a newer, higher wage can only shrink the ratio.
- Headquarters metro. A system’s nurses work in many cities; the CEO works at headquarters. Kaiser’s Oakland sits in the best-paid nursing metro here ($186,610). Against the national median ($97,550) its CEO’s year would read 133 years, not 70.
- HCA is not a 990. It files with the SEC. Its Summary Compensation Table counts stock and options at their value when granted, not when they vest, so it is close to but not the same measure.
Every number, with its filing and its flags
| System | CEO | CEO pay | Base salary | Earlier years’ pay | Median nurse | Years | Salary-only years | Filing and flags |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advocate HealthCharlotte, NC | Eugene Woods | $25,781,275 | $4,634,321 | $2,041,850 | $90,620Charlotte metro | 284 | 51 | IRS Form 990, Schedule JEIN 88-4157429Woods shared the top job in 2024 with co-CEO James Skogsbergh, who reported $30.9M including an $8.1M severance payment. The row uses Woods, the continuing CEO; Skogsbergh’s total would read 341 years. |
| HCA HealthcareFor-profitNashville, TN | Samuel N. Hazen | $23,799,137 | $1,539,947 | — | $84,040Nashville metro | 283 | 18 | SEC DEF 14A, Summary Compensation TableCIK 0000860730For-profit, so no 990. SEC totals count stock and options at grant-date value, not what vested; HCA’s own disclosed ratio to its median employee ($60,820) is 391 to 1. |
| NYU Langone HealthNYCNew York, NY | Robert I. Grossman, MD | $30,286,568 | $5,154,476 | $5,414,716 | $119,720New York metro | 253 | 43 | IRS Form 990, Schedule JEIN 13-3971298Dean and CEO. Pay is booked half by NYU Langone Hospitals and half by NYU (the Grossman School of Medicine); Schedule J calls it a shared cost, and the university’s own return reports the same total. |
| NewYork-PresbyterianNYCStruck Jan ’26New York, NY | Steven J. Corwin, MD | $26,271,976 | $2,368,447 | $11,483,872 | $119,720New York metro | 219 | 20 | IRS Form 990, Schedule JEIN 13-3957095$11.5M of the total is deferred pay reported on earlier 990s (Schedule J column F) and paid or vested in 2024. |
| AscensionSt. Louis, MO | Joseph R. Impicciche | $14,086,474 | $1,989,529 | — | $83,180St. Louis metro | 169 | 24 | IRS Form 990, Schedule JEIN 45-3358926June fiscal year: the July 2024 – June 2025 return, which reports calendar-2024 pay. |
| UPMCPittsburgh, PA | Leslie C. Davis | $13,324,020 | $2,048,483 | $1,006,472 | $82,370Pittsburgh metro | 162 | 25 | IRS Form 990, Schedule JEIN 20-8295721UPMC reports officer pay for the whole system on its consolidated “UPMC Group” return (EIN 20-8295721). June fiscal year: calendar-2024 pay. |
| CommonSpirit HealthChicago, IL | Wright Lassiter III | $14,175,319 | $2,871,082 | — | $100,490Chicago metro | 141 | 29 | IRS Form 990, Schedule JEIN 47-0617373June fiscal year: the July 2024 – June 2025 return, which reports calendar-2024 pay. |
| Montefiore Health SystemNYCStruck Jan ’26Bronx, NY | Philip O. Ozuah, MD, PhD | $16,690,037 | $5,348,892 | — | $119,720New York metro | 139 | 45 | IRS Form 990, Schedule JEIN 20-1615393Reported identically on Montefiore Health System, Montefiore Medical Center and Montefiore Einstein Inc. |
| Cleveland ClinicCleveland, OH | Tomislav Mihaljevic, MD | $9,709,152 | $7,016,406 | — | $83,940Cleveland metro | 116 | 84 | IRS Form 990, Schedule JEIN 34-0714585 |
| ProvidenceRenton, WA | Rod F. Hochman, MD | $12,257,636 | $2,928,934 | $873,503 | $128,260Seattle metro | 96 | 23 | IRS Form 990, Schedule JEIN 81-1244422Reported on Providence St. Joseph Health. 2024 was Hochman’s last year as CEO. |
| Mass General BrighamSomerville, MA | Anne Klibanski, MD | $9,180,758 | $2,758,711 | — | $106,180Boston metro | 86 | 26 | IRS Form 990, Schedule JEIN 04-3230035September fiscal year: the October 2024 – September 2025 return, which reports calendar-2024 pay. |
| Trinity HealthLivonia, MI | Michael Slubowski | $7,298,977 | $2,849,518 | — | $97,280Detroit metro | 75 | 29 | IRS Form 990, Schedule JEIN 35-1443425June fiscal year: the July 2024 – June 2025 return, which reports calendar-2024 pay. |
| Kaiser PermanenteOakland, CA | Gregory Adams | $12,976,050 | $2,195,616 | — | $186,610San Francisco metro | 70 | 12 | IRS Form 990, Schedule JEIN 94-1340523Reported on Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals. The San Francisco–Oakland metro has the highest RN median of any metro here. |
| Northwell HealthNYCNew Hyde Park, NY | Michael Dowling | $5,943,362 | $4,647,647 | — | $119,720New York metro | 50 | 39 | IRS Form 990, Schedule JEIN 11-3418133HQ is in Nassau County, inside the New York metro; the BLS API publishes no Nassau–Suffolk division figure. |
| Mayo ClinicRochester, MN | Gianrico Farrugia, MD | $4,888,096 | $3,922,824 | — | $101,660Rochester metro | 48 | 39 | IRS Form 990, Schedule JEIN 41-6011702 |
| Mount Sinai Health SystemNYCStruck Jan ’26New York, NY | Brendan Carr, MD | $5,489,914 | $4,010,053 | — | $119,720New York metro | 46 | 33 | IRS Form 990, Schedule JEIN 46-4248304Carr’s first year as CEO (titled “start 1/1/24”). His predecessor, Kenneth Davis, MD, reported $7.5M as a trustee and former officer the same year. |
Data: IRS Form 990 e-file XML (Schedule J, tax-year-2024 returns), with filer pages on ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer; BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, via the BLS public API; HCA Healthcare’s 2025 proxy statement on SEC EDGAR. The strike: Healthbeat (January 12, 2026) and Theo’s post from the picket line (January 18, 2026). The claim: This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #687 (October 1, 2026), at 34:58. Download the joined table, the 990 pull, HCA’s proxy or the nurse wages, built by scripts/fetch-nurse-ceo-pay.py. Every source on the data map.