Latest news with #BJC
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Penn State's Thon sets new record, raises more than $17M to help fight childhood cancer
Penn State's IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon broke another fundraising record this year, raising $17,737,040.93 toward the fight against pediatric cancer. The 2025 total was revealed Sunday afternoon, after more than 700 dancers inside the Bryce Jordan Center sat down for the first time in 46 hours. As each number was revealed for the yearlong fundraising effort, the BJC erupted in cheers — from the thousands of students on the floor to the crowds packing the arena. This year's efforts beat the $16.95 million raised in 2024 by nearly $800,000. It makes more than $250 million raised by Thon since 1977. Thon's sole beneficiary is Four Diamonds at Penn State Health Children's Hospital in Hershey, and the money raised ensures that families never see a medical bill or the financial burden of cancer, Thon's website states. Donations also help fund cancer research. The first night of Thon was headlined by the Grammy-nominated band The Fray, playing hits like 'Look After You' and 'How to Save a Life.' Joe King, the lead singer, raised the spirits of the dancers three hours into the event. 'It's an incredible, incredible cause — we are thankful to be here to participate in this incredible moment,' he told the crowd on Friday night. On the second day, the pep rally and the kids and teen's talent show were among highlights. 'Thon is more than just a weekend, it's a lifestyle that brings us together,' Sam Coffey, a Penn State alum who's an Olympic gold medalist and National Women's Soccer League player, said in a video message to the BJC. Later on Saturday night, dancers received a total of 20,938 letters from family and friends. Every dancer got at least one letter, for the biggest total in the event's history. Sunday featured the emotional 'family hour' where Thon families share their stories, before dancers were told at 4 p.m. that they could finally sit. The total reveal also included the organizations and individuals that raised the most money toward the Thon 2025 total. The independent couple that raised the most was Brooke and Jordan Petrone, with more than $51,000 raised. The commonwealth campus that raised the most was Fayette, with $76,046.43. The general organization that raised the most was Phi Gamma Nu with $269,881.89. The Greek organization that raised the most was Alpha Tau Omega and Zeta Tau Alpha, with $529,003.97. The special interest organization that raised the most was Atlas with a total of $224,275.80. The committee that raised the most was Thon Family Relations.
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Penn State's Thon weekend 2025 has arrived. Here's a look inside the Bryce Jordan Center
The Penn State IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon officially started at 6 p.m. Friday, with more than 700 dancers now on their feet inside the Bryce Jordan Center to raise money for the fight against pediatric cancer. Thon ends on Sunday afternoon, but in the 46 hours of the event there will be musical performances, a pep rally, the student-created line dance each hour and much more — all 'FTK' (For the Kids). Friday's event started in an unusual way, when fire alarms sounded multiple times a little more than an hour into Thon. The music briefly stopped playing, but the building was not evacuated and a Thon representative told the crowd that there was no emergency. Later on Friday, rock band The Fray took the BJC stage as the surprise national act. Penn State's Thon is annually recognized as the largest student-run philanthropy event in the world. Each year, it raises millions of dollars to fight pediatric cancer by supporting the Four Diamonds Fund at Penn State Health Children's Hospital in Hershey. Those funds — nearly $17 million was raised last year alone — benefit cancer research efforts and help cover medical bills for families whose children have pediatric cancer. To watch Thon live through the weekend, visit Below is a look at scenes from inside the BJC in the first hours of Thon on Friday evening. Thon donations are accepted year-round before officials reveal the annual fundraising total shortly after dancers finally sit Sunday afternoon. Supporters can donate online at
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Missouri hospital mergers come with one inevitable: Bigger executive paychecks
St. Luke's executives landed bigger bonuses and retirement windfalls in 2023 (Suzanne King/The Beacon). igger bonuses, higher executive salaries and a few eye-popping retirement payouts. That's how St. Luke's Health System closed the books on its final year as a nonprofit independent hospital chain, according to recent tax filings. The $2.5 billion hospital system, which merged with St. Louis-based nonprofit BJC Healthcare at the start of 2024, paid one-third more in bonuses and incentives to its top-earning employees in 2023 compared to the previous year. Combined total compensation for those employees, whose salaries are included in the hospital system's 990 tax filings, was up 27%. Not surprisingly, executives at the top of the organizational chart saw the biggest paydays. Dr. Melinda Estes, who retired as CEO when the merger was completed, had total compensation of $4.4 million, including a $2 million base salary, a $1.57 million bonus (46% bigger than the previous year's) and a $752,000 payout from a supplemental executive retirement plan (SERP). Chief Financial Officer Chuck V. Robb, who now is chief financial officer at BJC, pulled in total compensation of $7.8 million, thanks in large part to a $5.66 million retirement plan payout. (Robb had worked for St. Luke's for three decades.) Meanwhile, his 2023 bonus of $1.17 million, more than three times his 2022 bonus, was more than his $747,000 base salary. And Julie Quirin, who became St. Luke's president at the end of 2023 and is now president of BJC's western region, got total compensation of just under $1.9 million in 2023, including $960,000 base pay and a $521,000 bonus (24% more than the previous year). St. Luke's did not respond to requests for comment. While noteworthy, the health system's compensation packages are consistent with the broader nonprofit health care ecosystem. For decades, the trend has been to pay top hospital executives higher salaries as hospitals and health systems consolidate. In that context, executive salaries paid during St. Luke's last year as a standalone system are unsurprising. When compared with executives at other nonprofit systems, they aren't even exceptional. In 2021, nonprofit hospital systems Sentara Healthcare, CommonSpirit Health and Nuvance Health each paid their CEOs more than $30 million in total compensation, according to the Lown Institute, a nonpartisan health care think tank. Across the board, executive salaries at nonprofit hospitals are rising, surpassing what average hospital workers make caring for patients by ever-growing margins. In a study released last year, economists at Rice University found that CEO pay at independent hospitals and health systems jumped 30% between 2012 and 2019, from an average of around $996,000 in 2019 dollars to $1.3 million. Registered nurses, by contrast, had mean wage growth of 2.3% over the same period, from $75,652 in 2019 dollars to $77,460. Dr. Vikas Saini, Lown Institute president, said surging executive pay packages at nonprofit hospitals have been a long time coming. When Medicare was created in the 1960s, more people were insured, so hospitals gained a new source of revenue. Saini argued in an article published in Health Affairs that more revenue led to shifting attitudes in health care. Hospitals drifted from community-focused nonprofits toward behaving like big businesses. They added more corporate leaders to their boards, who made financial gains a newly important part of their mission. Merger between Kansas City and St. Louis hospital systems could mean bigger medical bills 'We pretend that hospitals are like other businesses,' he said. 'It's true, we don't want them losing money. We do want them to be solvent. But there's a difference between being solvent and serving the community and going all out like a business to maximize your revenue.' And along with the shift in attitudes about hospitals' missions came highly paid executives. Derek Jenkins, a health economist at Rice University, said he and his colleagues are studying whether the growing salaries are associated with better hospital quality. The answer is unclear. But another correlation is hard to dispute. 'It's definitely fair to say that higher profit (at the hospital) is associated with higher compensation,' he said. That's why most experts agree the trend toward higher executive pay goes hand-in-hand with a wave of hospital mergers that has led to far fewer stand-alone, community hospitals and the emergence of larger systems. In 2022, seven out of 10 hospitals were parts of larger systems, compared to just over half of hospitals in 2010. Last year, health systems announced 72 mergers, the most since 2020 when 79 were announced. St. Luke's merger with BJC was one of 65 planned in 2023. Hospitals argue that they need to merge to compete. They point to market forces like an insurance industry that controls prices and argue they will be stronger if they are bigger. When St. Luke's and BJC announced they had reached a definitive agreement to merge in late 2023, the hospitals said becoming Missouri's largest hospital system would help them recruit top talent, bolster medical research and help them address health care disparities. In reality, some economists say, the cost of care goes up when mergers reduce hospital competition. Even mergers between hospitals that don't compete in the same market can lead to higher prices for patients, some studies have found. But while there is no consensus about how hospital consolidation helps or hurts hospitals and patients, there is wide agreement about what it does to executive pay. In fact, Lawton Robert Burns, a professor of health care management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, argues that higher CEO compensation that results from mergers is the primary driver of consolidation. 'You get bigger systems and bigger systems have bigger pay,' he said. 'It has nothing to do with quality or access or other things they say. … It's all designed to enrich themselves.' Nonprofit hospitals argue they need to pay more to attract top executive talent. They can't provide stock options like their publicly traded counterparts, but they can pay large incentive bonuses, offer housing perks and set up and fund deferred retirement plans for top executives. SERPs, also known as 'top-hat' plans, allow select employees to defer income before paying taxes. According to the Lown Institute, hospitals often fund them through cash value life insurance purchased by the hospital or company providing the plan. Similar to a 401(k) retirement plan, which is typically available to every employee in an organization, income is invested in SERPs before taxes are paid. Taxes are only due once money is withdrawn. But unlike 401(k)s and other retirement plans known as qualified plans, top-hat plans don't limit participants' annual contributions. That means the eventual payout has the potential to be much bigger. In a study of top-hat plans in private industry, the Institute for Policy Studies found marked income disparities, even between top-earning CEOs who have access to SERPs and those who don't. The study crunched the numbers for two theoretical CEOs who each invested $1 million a year over seven years. Researchers found that the CEO with a top-hat plan, who didn't have to pay taxes up front, could potentially earn $6.6 million from the investment. But the executive who had to pay income taxes before investing the money would come out with $5.3 million. Of course, a regular employee with access to a 401(k) or other tax-deferred retirement plan has far less income potential. Even if an employee has enough of their paycheck left over to invest the maximum allowed, that maximum contribution by law was only $23,000 in 2024. (Workers who are at least 50 years old can make additional catch-up contributions.) Sarah Anderson, an author of the Institute for Policy Studies' report on top-hat plans, said the disparity in retirement benefits is another example of the vast wealth gap between executives at the tops of organizations and the employees who work there. And that gap also applies to nonprofit hospitals. Until relatively recently, many employers maintained pension plans to fund employees' retirements. Employers made the financial investment, and employees were guaranteed payments once they retired. St. Luke's discontinued its pension plan at the end of 2021, according to an independent audit report. But as labor unions lost power, Anderson said, pension plans were replaced by defined benefit plans like 401(k)s 'where burden and risk is on individual employees,' she said. Meanwhile, top executives who qualify for top-hat plans have comparatively enormous retirement accounts. 'You know, there's a number beyond which it's not about food on the table or making sure your kids can afford to go to college, or even that you have a vacation home,' Saini said. 'There's a number beyond which you have all that, and at that point, what is the point?' This article first appeared on Beacon: Kansas City and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
