Thanks to the people of Western Pennsylvania and to the workers who care for patients, UPMC has become one of the most profitable hospital systems in the country, earning $2 million in profits per day.
In fact, the American Hospital Directory recently named UPMC Presbyterian the country’s top grossing hospital. UPMC Presbyterian brought in $10.19 billion.
That’s not all pure profit. But regardless, it’s still quite a lot of billions. From one hospital.
But let’s talk real profits now. Last year UPMC posted over $445 million in profits. As a non-profit healthcare system, you would think that UPMC took that money and reinvested it in the employees who provide the care UPMC patients depend on, right?
Unfortunately, it’s not that clear cut.
We hear a lot of stories on the news about executives and big banks and huge corporations bringing in millions of dollars in salaries and bonuses. However, we don’t generally expect employees at non-profits to be millionaires. And that assumption absolutely stands true…unless you happen to be an executive at a UPMC care facility.

Last year, 22 UPMC execs each made over a million dollars in salary.
The President of UPMC Presbyterian-Shadyside got a raise in 2011 that totaled $124,812. Remember that we’re just talking about a raise here–that large sum is not his entire income. And the Presbyterian-Shadyside President is not the only one. Every UPMC senior executive received a minimum of a $100,000 raise last year.

Let’s not forget the big guy at the top. UPMC CEO Jeffrey Romoff made almost $6 million last year, an hefty increase of 49% from his salary the previous year. If Romoff was paid an hourly wage, he’d be making approximately $2,782 an hour.
In case you are wondering whether or not those kinds of lavish raises are trickling down to the workers who actually serve the patients, wonder no more because they do not. There is no “trickle down” theory at work here. It took UPMC worker Chaney Lewis six years to get a raise of 2.5%.
UPMC could have given every single one of it’s 55,000 employees a $6,000 a year raise and still had $100 million in profits left over. That’s hundreds of millions of dollars people who live right here could put back into our local economy.
$6,000 is just a couple hours of work for Jeffrey Romoff, but that’s a lot of money to the rest of us.