Compensation for Atrium Health's top executives climbed an average of 21.5 percent in 2025, according to a newly released report from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority, which operates as Atrium Health. The Charlotte-based hospital giant released the figures in response to an August 20 request from The Ledger/NC Health News. The compensation report lists 11 executives earning annual pay ranging from $906,000 to $5.2 million, including base salaries, bonuses, plan-based incentives, and other forms of compensation.
Chief Financial Officer Bradley Clark received both the highest total compensation and the steepest increase, with his pay jumping 83 percent to $5.18 million. Ken D. Haynes, now chief enterprise services officer at Advocate Health, came in second at $5.02 million, essentially unchanged from 2024. Chief Clinical Officer Scott Rissmiller earned $4.59 million, up 14 percent, while Chief Legal Officer Brett Denton took home $4.48 million, a 16 percent increase. Carol Lovin, chief of staff and chief integration officer, received $3.65 million, up just 1 percent. The average raise of 21.5 percent in 2025 was significantly lower than the 41 percent average increase executives received the previous year. Atrium brought in a record $14.1 billion in revenue in 2025 and ended the year with $1.66 billion in excess of revenues over expenses, the nonprofit equivalent of profit, representing a 26 percent increase from 2024.
The report excluded the compensation of Gene Woods, CEO of Atrium's parent organization Advocate Health, marking the second consecutive year Atrium left him off the list. Atrium says Woods wasn't included because he's an Advocate Health executive, not an executive of the hospital authority. His pay won't become public until Advocate files its 990 tax form, typically in November. Woods earned $25.8 million in 2024, a 49 percent increase from the year before, according to the Advocate tax filing released last November. For context, WakeMed CEO Donald Gintzing earned about $1.9 million in 2024, Duke University Health System's then-CEO Craig Albanese made $2.34 million, and Novant Health CEO Carl Armato took home about $8.2 million, still less than one-third of Woods' compensation.
Hospital executive pay faces mounting scrutiny from critics who question whether multi-million-dollar packages can be justified for nonprofit systems that receive millions in state and federal tax exemptions and whose mission is to serve the public. This year, Sen. Jim Burgin introduced legislation that would cap nonprofit hospital CEO compensation at 400 times the lowest-paid full-time worker's pay, which would limit Woods' compensation to about $15.7 million annually, a 39 percent cut from his 2024 earnings. The bill would also require nonprofit hospitals to report their CEO pay by March 1. Atrium has said that competitive compensation is necessary to recruit and retain top leaders capable of running increasingly complex hospital systems. The bill cleared the Senate Health Care and Judiciary committees and was referred in June to the Senate appropriations committee, where it remains as the legislature has halted most work until after November's election.