The Minnesota Nurses Association has introduced a "Healing Greed Agenda" outlining its priorities for the 2024 Minnesota legislative session, including a limit on CEO pay at nonprofit hospitals.
The union, which represents 22,000 registered nurses and other healthcare professionals in Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota and Iowa, did not indicate a specific amount in its agenda.
"Hospital CEOs are making millions, taking six-digit raises each year while patients are charged more and healthcare workers are getting chewed up and spit out," the agenda states. "We need to cap nonprofit hospital CEO and executive pay so more resources go where they should in our hospitals — to patients and caregivers at the bedside."
The agenda, which also proposes new protections against violence in hospitals for nurses and patients, improving nurse loan forgiveness programs, and more transparency regarding executive pay, follows the demise of the union-backed Keeping Nurses at the Bedside Act staffing measure last year.
Rochester-based Mayo Clinic nearly received an exemption from the measure, until its opposition to the proposal prompted pushback from other health systems, leading to the legislature creating a compromise bill: the Nurse and Patient Safety Act, which cuts staffing regulations and instead addresses workplace violence prevention, nurse burnout and loan forgiveness. It was signed into law May 26.
In a news release, the union said the situation "made clear the need to put meaningful new regulations on these healthcare companies, to protect patients and workers from these same corporate abuses in our hospitals."
The Minnesota Hospital Association shared a statement with Becker's in response to the union's agenda, pointing to the complexity of healthcare compensation.
"Compensation in healthcare settings is not as simple as many critics portray it: the pandemic years and their many challenges have made healthcare finance, and executive tenure and compensation very volatile. Brief, year-to-year comparisons don't tell the whole story," the MHA said.
"At the same time, Minnesota hospitals and health systems are facing unprecedented challenges that are testing the skills and resilience of even the most experienced leaders. Compensation is one way hospital boards — which represent their larger communities — are trying to keep good leaders in place, working day and night on this crisis."
The MHA also said local community leaders determining compensation take "a thorough and thoughtful process, in adherence to IRS guidelines and fiduciary duty, to ensure that compensation strategies not only reflect market conditions but also address the unique demands of patient care in their communities."
The group called on policymakers "to address the multiple crises facing Minnesota hospitals, [such as increased labor costs], in ways that will ensure stabilization and future sustainability for Minnesota patients and care teams."