Sullivan, Cotter and Associates, Inc., a health care compensation and human resource management consulting firm, has just published the 2011Survey of Manager and Executive Compensation in Hospitals and Health Systems.This is the nineteenth edition of the respected industry resource. More than 290 health systems and 930 hospitals participated in the survey, submitting data for nearly 23,900 executives and managers between March andJuly 2011.

A key finding of the survey was that among health systems and hospitals that participated in both 2010 and 2011, base salaries increased on average by 3.1% and 2.7%, respectively. These increases are consistent with the budgeted 2011 salary increases for health systems and hospitals of 2.9%.

"Salary increases continue to be moderate," noted SullivanCotter Managing PrincipalTom Pavlik. "For next year; the data indicate average projected budgets of 3.0% for executives and 2.7% for managers in health systems and hospitals although these data were collected prior to the current economic turmoil. However, we did see around a 4.5% increase in total cash compensation levels."