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Want to be influential in healthcare? Still helps to be white, male and highly paid

So, it’s true. The top 2 spots in Modern Healthcare’s 2014 list of the 100 most influential people in healthcare are black men. If you look at the top 10, there are two white women. The remaining 6 people are white guys. If you look at who makes the most money, it’s a much more […]

By on August 26, 2014

So, it’s true. The top 2 spots in Modern Healthcare’s 2014 list of the 100 most influential people in healthcare are black men. If you look at the top 10, there are two white women. The remaining 6 people are white guys.

If you look at who makes the most money, it’s a much more familiar picture. Not only are all top 10 earners – $8 million and above – white men, there’s not a doctor among them.

Aetna’s Mark Bertolini has said that insurance companies are dinosaurs, destined for extinction. That may be true but he sure is holding on until the asteroid hits with his salary of $30 million. Bertolini is responsible for the endpoint on the salary slider scale. Only two other people in the list come anywhere close to his paycheck, and that’s Trevor Fetter, president and CEO of Tenet Healthcare Corp., at $22 million, and John Hammergran, president and CEO of McKesson Corp., at $25 million. Here are the best paid people on the list. The first number is the person’s overall rank on the list.

  • 4. Stephen Hemsley $12M CEO UnitedHealth Group
  • 8. Mark Bertolini, $30M President and CEO Aetna
  • 10. Kent Thiry $17M Chairman and CEO DaVita Healthcare Partners
  • 12. Joseph Swedish $16M President and CEO WellPoint
  • 13. Trevor Fetter $22M President and CEO Tenet Healthcare Corp.
  • 24. Bruce Broussard $8M President and CEO Humana
  • 27. Alan Miller $13M Chairman and CEO Universal Health Services (one of the oldest on the list at 77)
  • 28. David Cordani $13M President and CEO Cigna (one of the youngest on the list at 48)
  • 79. John Hammergran $25M President and CEO McKesson Corp.
  • 85. Alex Gorsky $16M Chairman and CEO Johnson & Johnson

Everyone else is at $17 million or less. The funniest and saddest salary number that I found was for Dr. Tejal Gandhi who is the president of the National Patient Safety Foundation for only $158,480. It’s no accident that the person who works to keep patients safe from healthcare-inflicted injuries is on the low end of the salary scale. Also, I don’t usually think about nuns making million-dollar salaries but Sister Carol Keehan, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, brings in $1.2 million a year.

Of course it’s not salary that determines influence. The public servants in the top 10 make a pittance compared to their corporate colleagues. President Obama was the most influential a couple years ago, when the ACA became law. But he doesn’t deserve the top spot now, as his only power is the veto, or so the related article says (registration required). Kaiser Permanente’s Bernard Tyson deserves his No. 2 spot (although he has been in a leadership role at Kaiser for three years so why is this his first time on the list?). UnitedHealth Group’s Stephen Hemsley deserves his No. 4 slot, too. UnitedHealth does seem to understand the transformation of healthcare better than the other providers and is building digital tools that people actually use and Kaiser is miles ahead of everyone else.

And only three “technology” companies made the list: Epic, McKesson and Johnson & Johnson. Given all the change and investment around health IT, I can’t believe there aren’t more health IT companies on the list. Yes, I see Dr. Karen DeSalvo of the ONC at No. 56. Even though she is new to the job, that is a pretty low ranking.

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By PurpleLab

The real problem with this list is that there is not a single entrepreneur on it. Where is athenahealth’s Jonathan Bush? If anyone deserves to be on there, it’s him. What about the people in charge of Health Kit at Apple or Google Glass? What about the investors supporting these new businesses? What about the CEO of Practice Fusion Ryan Howard? What about Carrie Banahan, executive director of the Kentucky Health Benefits Exchange? Or Nina Nashif, the CEO of Healthbox? I hate lists like this in general, but this one seems particularly backward looking.

Here is how the list breaks down by sector:

  • Provider 43
  • Government 18
  • Associations 16
  • Insurance 6
  • Quality 5
  • Policy/Research 4
  • Technology 3
  • Group purchasing 2
  • Labor 1
  • Philanthropy 1
  • Accreditation 1

Here is the age breakdown of the 100 people on the list:

  • 40 – 49 – 6 people
  • 50 – 59 – 23 people
  • 60 – 69 – 31 people
  • 70 – 79 – 4 people

Yes, you’re right, that doesn’t add up to 100. Obama doesn’t show up on the 50 – 59 list, not sure why. Maybe the missing 45 people are too uptight about their age to reveal it? My money is on a data glitch with the sorter on the Modern Healthcare site.

It’s cool that you can sort the list on so many variables. Too bad the list itself doesn’t represent more of the people who are using technology to make healthcare better.