Providence St. Joseph Watch
Keeping a watchful eye on the nation’s ever expanding third largest hospital chain.
Executive Salaries
As Providence St. Joseph grows, executives profit
When Providence Health and Services took over St. Joseph Health in 2016, the big winners were Providence’s top executives who snared big raises while laying off caregivers and slashing services.
CEO Rod Hochman’s total compensation soared from $4.1 million in 2016 to $10.5 million in 2017. Two other top Providence St. Joseph executives more than doubled their salaries in 2017, and two others received raises in excess of $1 million.
Overall, Providence gave its top 14 executives raises exceeding $14 million in 2017. Their total compensation jumped 59 percent, from $25.1 million in 2016 to $39.7 million in 2017.
Meanwhile, those same executives have set about to eliminate caregivers and reduce services.
Just months after the merger, Providence St. Joseph announced 210 layoffs. Last year the company announced it was cutting 550 jobs at Swedish.
In California, Providence St. Joseph announced 55 layoffs at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, which had just reported a $70 million operating profit. Among the layoffs were more than two dozen nursing assistants, several of whom had continued coming to work and caring for patients immediately after losing their homes in the 2017 Wine Country wildfires.
Among those laid off last July was the hospital’s last remaining employee trained to sit with patients who pose a danger to themselves. Just two months later, the hospital left a nursing assistant alone with a psychiatric patient, who shoved her against a wall and then jumped out a second-story window.
Providence also laid off 25 frontline caregivers in California’s Humboldt County, where its two hospitals reported a combined $172 million operating profit between 2014 and 2017.
“It’s about money,” Racheal Jordan, a constant care attendant who lost her job in the layoff, told KIEM. “They don’t care about us. They don’t care about patients.”
Instead of investing in caregivers and fully staffing their hospitals, Providence St. Joseph has pumped more money into venture capital investments. After poaching executives from Microsoft and Amazon, the company announced in 2019 that it would launch a new $150 million investment fund through its venture capital arm, Providence Ventures. The fund will pour money into technology and medical companies.
| Name | Title | Total Compensation |
|---|---|---|
| Rod Hochman | President/CEO | $10,533,384 |
| Mike Butler | President | $4,624,609 |
| Debra Canales | EVP/Chief Administrative Officer | $2,910,666 |
| Rhonda Medows, MD | EVP/Chief Population Health Officer | $2,708,746 |
| Amy Compton-Phillips | EVP/Chief Clinical Officer | $2,516,017 |
| Annette Walker | President of Strategy | $2,497,415 |
| Cindy Strauss | Secretary | $2,376,334 |
| JoAnn Escasa-Haigh | EVP/Assistant Treasurer | $2,039,774 |
| Sharron Dwyer | EVP/General Counsel | $1,892,322 |
| Richard Afable | EVP/PSJH So. CA Region | $1,662,841 |
| Darrin Montalvo | President of Enterprise Services | $1,634,290 |
| Aaron Martin | EVP/Chief Digital Innovation Officer | $1,616,390 |
| Vemlat Bhamidipati | EVP/Treasurer | $1,486,287 |
| Todd Hofheins | Former EVP/CFO/Treasurer | $1,406,722 |
| Orest Holubec | SVP/Chief Communications/External Affairs Officer | $1,616,390 |
| Total: $41,178,675 |