National figures, 2020–2024, from hospitals’ own IRS filings and federal wage data. For your own hospital’s executive pay, raises and finances, look it up.
17×
Nationally, the median hospital’s highest-paid executive earned 17.4× what the median staff nurse earned in 2024 — $1,626,964 against $93,600. Your hospital will differ. Look yours up →
One nurse, to scale.
Medians across 1,080 nonprofit hospital filers reporting a top-paid figure. Bars to scale.
Whose pay actually grew, after inflation?
Change in median pay 2020–2024 after CPI-U inflation of 21.9%. Before inflation: +30.0%, +24.3%, +18.9%.
Nurse executives were the only group to lose ground. Staff nurses did not fall furthest behind — they beat inflation, barely. The difference in growth is about four points. The difference in level is seventeen times.
A bedside nurse never appears on a Form 990. It lists officers, key employees and the five highest-paid staff over $100K. The nursing titles we can see are chief nursing officers — $327,197 median. Not a staff nurse, and not presented as one.
Staff nurse pay is a different source: BLS national median, all industries. Your state and hospital will differ.
The top-paid person is not always the CEO — sometimes a surgeon or a system executive.
990 pay includes deferred compensation, which can spike in the year it pays out.
Executive pay: IRS Form 990 Part VII, our parse of every nonprofit hospital filing — 1,080 filers with a top-paid figure in both years, 492 disclosing a nursing title. Staff nurse: BLS OEWS May 2020 and May 2024, SOC 29-1141. Inflation: CPI-U June 2020–June 2024. All figures are medians.
About this data. Every executive figure comes from a hospital’s own IRS filing and each hospital page links to it. These are medians across filers, not the pay at any one hospital, and not a statement about whether anyone is paid appropriately. Figures lag one to two years. Published for general information only — not legal, financial or employment advice. If a figure does not match the filing it links to, tell us and we will correct it: cashpaymed.org