Not-for-profit CommonSpirit Health paid its CEO $35 million in 2021

CommonSpiritHealth, the massive not-for-profit health system formed through a 2019 merger, paid its former CEO $35.5 million in 2021, the latest year for which data is available. 

The size of Lloyd Dean’s pay package is likely to reignite questions about health system CEO pay, especially at tax-exempt organizations. It’s more than twice the total compensation paid to the CEO of Ascension, a comparably sized not-for-profit system, and puts him in the upper tier of manyfor-profit peersthat run other provider organizations. 

“The distinction between not-for-profit and for-profit — certainly in health care and certainly in relationship to hospitals — is negligible or nonexistent,”

said Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that publishes data on hospital CEO pay and community benefit spending. “This, I think, is additional evidence of that.”