By Michelle Crouch
Co-published with The Charlotte Ledger
Key Takeaways:
- Compensation for Atrium Health’s top executives rose an average of 21.5 percent in 2025, with the CFO receiving the largest increase of 83 percent.
- Hospital executive pay faces growing scrutiny from critics who question multi-million dollar compensation at tax-exempt nonprofits; Atrium says competitive compensation is necessary to recruit and retain leaders capable of running complex health systems.
- Advocate Health CEO Gene Woods’ pay was again excluded from Atrium’s report.
The compensation of Charlotte-based Atrium Health’s top executives rose by an average of 21 percent in 2025, according to newly released records, as the hospital giant seeks to combine with Raleigh-based WakeMed Health & Hospitals.
The executive compensation report from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority, which does business as Atrium Health, lists 11 executives who earned annual compensation ranging from $906,000 to $5.2 million.
Each executive’s total compensation includes their base salary, as well as bonuses, plan-based incentives and other forms of compensation.
Atrium released the report in response to an Aug. 20 request from The Ledger/NC Health News.
The report did not include the pay of Gene Woods, CEO of Atrium parent Advocate Health, or other top Advocate executives.
Last year was the first time Atrium excluded Woods from the report, saying he was not included because he is an Advocate Health executive and not an executive of the hospital authority. His pay will not become public until Advocate files its 990 tax form, which typically happens 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.
Woods’ compensation has drawn scrutiny from critics who oppose the proposed Atrium-WakeMed combination.
For comparison, WakeMed CEO Donald Gintzig earned about $1.9 million in 2024, while Duke University Health System paid then-CEO Craig Albanese $2.34 million in 2024. Novant Health CEO Carl Armato earned about $8.2 million — still less than one-third of Woods’ compensation.
Atrium has said that competitive compensation is necessary to recruit and retain top leaders who are capable of running increasingly complex hospital systems.
In 2025, Atrium Health brought in a record $14.1 billion in revenue. It ended the year with $1.66 billion in excess of revenues over expenses — the nonprofit equivalent of profit. That’s a 26 percent increase from 2024. Those figures do not include Wake Forest Baptist Health or hospitals in Illinois and Wisconsin that joined with Atrium in 2022 to create Advocate Health.
Double-digit raises
Among Atrium executives with comparable figures from 2024, compensation rose by an average of 21.5 percent in 2025, well below the 41 percent average increase the previous year.
The highest compensation and biggest increase went to Chief Financial Officer Bradley Clark, whose compensation jumped 83 percent to $5.18 million.
The next highest paid executive was Ken D. Haynes, who is now chief enterprise services officer at Advocate Health. The report listed his compensation as $5.02 million, essentially flat from 2024.
A note said he was president of the hospital authority only until June 1, “but dollars represent the full year of compensation.” The Atrium attorney who released the report did not respond to a question asking if the $5.02 million includes compensation Haynes received from Advocate after his promotion.
After Clark and Haynes, Atrium’s highest paid executives were:
- Scott Rissmiller, chief clinical officer: $4.59 million, up 14 percent from $4.03 million in 2024.
- Brett Denton, chief legal officer: $4.48 million, up 15.9 percent from $3.87 million in 2024.
- Carol Lovin, chief of staff and chief integration officer: $3.65 million, up 1 percent from $3.61 million in 2024.
- Rasu Shrestha, chief innovation and commercialization officer: $3.27 million, down 0.6 percent from $3.29 million in 2024.
Whose pay must be disclosed?
Atrium operates both as part of Advocate Health, a $39 billion multistate nonprofit hospital system, and as the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority, a public body.
That complicated corporate structure makes it difficult to know which executives fall under the state’s disclosure requirements for public hospitals, and the distinction between Atrium and Advocate can be hard to follow. Woods, for example, appeared before Wake County commissioners in June on Atrium’s behalf to answer questions about a proposed combination with Raleigh-based WakeMed Health and Hospitals.
North Carolina law requires hospital authorities to disclose the compensation of anyone serving as their CEO or “acting in a similar capacity.”
Public hospitals must also disclose their highest-paid other executive officers and the five highest-paid “key employees” who are not already included in that group.
Executive pay under scrutiny
Hospital executive pay has come under scrutiny recently in North Carolina and across the country. Critics say multi-million-dollar executive compensation packages are hard to justify 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 (R-Angier) introduced legislation that would cap nonprofit hospital CEO compensation at 400 times the lowest-paid full-time worker’s compensation. That would limit Woods’ compensation to about $15.7 million annually — a 39 percent pay cut from his 2024 compensation. The bill would also require nonprofit hospitals to report their CEO pay by March 1.
The bill, SB 978, cleared the Senate Health Care and Judiciary committees and was referred on June 16 to the Senate appropriations committee, where it remains. The legislature has halted most work until after November’s election.
2025 Atrium Executive Compensation Report
| Executive | 2025 compensation | 2024 compensation | Percent change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bradley Clark | $5,176,739 | $2,831,292 | 82.8% |
| Ken D. Haynes* | $5,022,866 | $5,073,340 | -1.0% |
| Scott C. Rissmiller, MD | $4,593,692 | $4,029,199 | 14.0% |
| Brett J. Denton | $4,484,586 | $3,867,971 | 15.9% |
| Carol A. Lovin | $3,645,017 | $3,608,427 | 1.0% |
| Rasu B. Shrestha, MD | $3,267,108 | $3,287,435 | -0.6% |
| Kinneil Coltman, DHA | $2,767,605 | $2,333,488 | 18.6% |
| Suzanna J. Fox, MD | $2,453,445 | — | — |
| Vicki J. Block | $1,559,112 | $1,280,031 | 21.8% |
| Steven Smoot | $1,319,721 | — | — |
| Brian L. Freeman | $906,833 | $644,058 | 40.8% |
*Ken Haynes was President of CMHA January 1 – June 1, 2025, but dollars represent the full year of compensation.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
