Legislature agrees on hospital disclosure

Raleigh | Lawmakers reached a compromise Thursday on public records that will require public hospitals to make available the total compensation they give to their top executives and employees.

The House and Senate had disagreed over whether the state's 30 or so publicly owned hospitals should have to release more than just the base salary of their workers.

A 2005 state Appeals Court ruling involving The Charlotte Observer had sided with a public hospital that wanted to conceal the full compensation of current and former workers, arguing that releasing it would put them at a disadvantage with their private rivals which don't have to disclose the information.

The final edition of the bill approved by both the House and Senate would generally keep confidential how much most public hospital employees make.

But it would make a public record of the salary, incentives, bonus and other benefits of the hospital's chief executive officer, four highest paid executives and five other "key employees."

The compensation information is similar to the type of financial information that private, not-for-profit hospitals must provide in their federal tax disclosure forms.

"This makes them disclose it all," said Sen. David Hoyle, D-Gaston, the sponsor of the Senate bill that had sought the expanded hospital information.

The North Carolina Hospital Association supports the compromise because it "allows public hospitals to operate under the same rules as nonprofits in terms of disclosure of important information about scarce employees highly trained and in short supply," said Hugh Tilson, association senior vice president.

An attorney for the North Carolina Press Association, which had also sought the disclosure of the compensation, didn't immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

The bill, which now goes to Gov. Mike Easley for his signature, also clarifies that the salary and other compensation of other state and local government employees are open to public inspection.

The final edition also incorporated another bill that further defines "competitive health care information" to include contracts a public hospital or public hospital authority enters to purchase a medical practice, keeping the information confidential.

This change reverses a state Supreme Court ruling this year that found a Wilkes County newspaper had the right to review a public hospital's contract to buy the practice of the county's only gastroenterologist.