By Michelle Crouch
The total compensation of Atrium Health’s top executives soared by an average of 41 percent last year, according to newly released data from the hospital system, but information about the salary of Eugene Woods, CEO of Atrium parent Advocate Health, was not included in the release.
The executive compensation report from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority, which does business as Atrium Health, shows double-digit raises across much of Atrium’s senior leadership, with several executives seeing their compensation jump by more than 50 percent.
The four highest paid executives were:
- Ken Haynes, president of Advocate Health’s southeast region, received $5.07 million in 2024, up 56.6 percent from $3.24 million in 2023.
- Scott Rissmiller, executive vice president and chief physician executive, had compensation of $4.03 million, up 54.3 percent.
- Brett Denton, the system’s top legal officer, saw a 68.5 percent pay increase to $3.87 million.
- Carol Lovin, chief integration officer and chief of staff, earned $3.6 million, up 57.4 percent.
Each executive’s total compensation includes their base salary, bonuses, plan-based incentives and other forms of compensation.
In 2024, Atrium Health reported $12.6 billion in net operating revenue and $1.31 billion in net income, which some would call profit. Those figures — a new record for the state’s largest hospital system — do not include revenue from Atrium Wake Forest Baptist Health or hospitals in Illinois and Wisconsin that joined with Atrium in 2022 to create Advocate Health.
So far in 2025, Atrium has continued to exceed its budget expectations, with net operating revenue of $3.32 billion for the first three months, according to a report presented at a May 13 hospital authority board meeting.
Public hospitals are required by North Carolina law to disclose the total compensation of their CEOs and highest-paid officers.
Why wasn’t the salary of Advocate Health CEO Eugene Woods reported?
Woods’ pay was disclosed in Atrium’s 2023 report, when he brought home $17.36 million — up 24 percent from 2022 and more than triple the $5.4 million he earned in his first full year as CEO in 2017.
In response to an inquiry from The Ledger/NC Health News, Atrium said Woods’ 2024 compensation will be reported on Advocate Health’s annual Form 990 filing. That document, required by the IRS for nonprofits, typically isn’t filed until later — meaning Woods’ compensation likely won’t be public until this November.
After Atrium combined with Midwest-based Advocate Aurora Health in December 2022, Woods served as co-CEO of the combined system with Jim Skogsbergh. But Skogsbergh stepped down in May 2024, leaving Woods as the system’s sole leader.
The Advocate Health umbrella also encompasses Winston Salem-based Wake Forest Baptist, which combined with Atrium in 2020, creating a new entity known as Atrium Health Inc.
Both “combinations,” as Atrium describes them, have allowed the system to grow in ways it otherwise could not, because as a hospital authority the system is limited by state law in how far it can expand geographically. But the combinations and partnership agreements have also resulted in a more complex leadership structure and blurred each entity’s legal and financial responsibilities, said Ge Bai, an accounting and health policy professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Many senior leaders now hold dual titles, serving simultaneously as executives at Atrium Health and at Advocate Health.
“These convoluted organizational structures make it very difficult for the public to understand who’s accountable for the actions of these organizations,” Bai said.
Atrium’s combinations with other systems to form new corporate entities have allowed Atrium to expand far beyond Charlotte while retaining many of the tax advantages and legal protections of a local governmental entity.
Critics question high salaries, raises
Critics say Atrium’s executive compensation and annual raises are excessive for a tax-exempt nonprofit, thus diverting resources that could otherwise be invested in patient care and health care for underserved communities.
Barak Richman, a professor at George Washington University Law School who studies health care policy, said the public ultimately shoulders the cost of high executive pay through higher health care costs and insurance premiums.
“Everyone in North Carolina who purchases health insurance is contributing to these salaries,” he said. “The higher they are, the more each insured person pays.”
A 40 percent raise “sure sounds high to me, and I think it would sound high to anyone,” he added.
He said he believes raises should be tied to measurable improvements in public health, not to a hospital’s profitability.
“It’d be nice if compensation for a nonprofit health system that enjoys multiple subsidies and legal protections from the state of North Carolina were based on concrete metrics of how the health system improved the health and welfare of the state’s residents,” he said.
Under IRS rules, charitable hospitals must operate in the public interest and demonstrate a measurable community benefit in exchange for not paying taxes, but the IRS does not go into detail about what that means.
Atrium was also eligible to receive boosted reimbursement from the state’s Medicaid program under HASP, the Healthcare Access and Stabilization Program. Under HASP, the state’s hospitals receive more from Medicaid in exchange for paying higher taxes to the state as a way to cover North Carolina’s share of the cost for expanding Medicaid to some 650,000 mostly low-income workers.
Atrium and the state’s other hospitals signed an agreement last year in which they agreed to forgive medical debt for low-income patients and make changes to their financial assistance policies in return for higher HASP payments.
Read more of our coverage of Atrium health
Atrium: Competitive pay necessary to attract talent
In a statement, Atrium Health said competitive pay is essential in an increasingly complex healthcare landscape.
“To attract and retain the best talent to fulfill our purpose, we offer a competitive compensation package determined by our governing board and consistent with governance best practices, which is guided by independent expert advice and national data from similar sized organizations,” the statement said.
Atrium reported $2.97 billion in community benefits for calendar year 2023, including free and discounted care, Medicare and Medicaid shortfalls, medical research costs and community initiatives. (The hospital has not announced its 2024 community benefit number.)
Atrium also has one of the most generous charity care policies in the state, offering free care to patients whose households earn up to three times the federal poverty level ($46,950 for an individual or $96,450 for a family of four).
Atrium Health raised its minimum wage for its North and South Carolina employees to $18.50 per hour this year — meaning Woods’ 2023 compensation was about 451 times that of the system’s lowest paid workers.
Other nonprofit hospital systems in North Carolina haven’t released their 2024 executive pay. In 2023, Novant Health CEO Carl Armato earned $5.8 million and Duke Health CEO Craig Albanese earned $1.4 million.
HCA Healthcare, which operates Mission Health in western North Carolina, awarded its CEO Sam Hazen total compensation of $21.3 million in 2023. The Nashville-based company is the country’s largest health care system and operates as a for-profit entity.
ATRIUM HEALTH 2024 EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION
| Name | Title | 2024 compensation | Percent increase |
| Ken Haynes | President, Advocate Health southeast region | $5,073,340 | 56.6% |
| Scott Rissmiller | Executive VP and chief physician officer | $4,029,199 | 54.3% |
| Brett Denton | Executive VP and chief legal officer | $3,867,971 | 68.5% |
| Carol Lovin | Executive VP, chief of staff and chief integration officer | $3,608,427 | 57.4% |
| Rasu Shrestha | Executive VP, chief innovation and commercial officer | $3,287,435 | 48.3% |
| Bradley Clark | Executive VP and chief financial officer | $2,831,292 | N/A |
| J. Michael Parkerson | Senior VP and chief marketing officer | $2,449,362 | N/A |
| Delvecchio Finley | President, Atrium Health Georgia market | $2,400,749 | 11.1% |
| Kinnell Coltman | Executive VP, chief community & social impact officer | $2,333,488 | N/A |
| Andy Crowder | Senior VP and chief information and analytics officer | $2,298,750 | 33.1% |
| Roy L. Hawkins | Senior VP, president – north area, greater Charlotte market | $1,385,414 | N/A |
| Rashard Johnson | Senior VP and market president – South | $1,361,734 | 23.9% |
| Vicki Block | Senior VP and market president – Central | $1,280,031 | 18.9% |
| Brian L. Freeman | Senior VP and president – west area, greater Charlotte market | $644,058 | N/A |
This article is part of a partnership between The Charlotte Ledger and North Carolina Health News to produce original health care reporting.
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