Doctors' pay: County hospitals fighting to keep it under wraps

Indiana law gives you the right to know how much public employees make.

A quick database search on the Indiana Gateway for Government Units is all it takes to see just how much money every teacher, police officer and city council member brought home last year.

Right now, the database includes doctors and staff at county hospitals. But the Indiana Hospital Association is trying to change that.

County hospitals say they're put at a disadvantage when they have to make doctor salaries publicly available, said Spence Grover, vice president of IHA. Doing so gives private hospitals they compete with access to internal information from their publicly owned competitors, but the reverse isn't true.

"We consider this an interpretation, a poor interpretation, of what a county hospital is," Grover said. "It's been a thorn for some of the county hospitals for some time."

County hospitals say they deserve exemptions from state laws that make salaries public records because, although they were created by counties, few if any, receive funding from property taxes.

Although they've been working toward these changes since the beginning of the year, the issue has flared up recently after IndyStar.com published a list of the 20 highest paid public employees in Indiana. Six doctors from hospitals in Dearborn and Daviess counties were on the list, and the best paid among them brought in $768,588 last year.

Most hospitals didn't disclose salaries at all. So there could be higher paid doctors at any of the public hospitals that didn't file required forms with the state.

An advisory opinion issued this month by Attorney General Greg Zoeller's office confirms that the law does require county hospitals to report employee compensation to the state. It leaves unanswered the question of whether the state can keep that information to itself and prevent its public release.

That still needs to be settled by the State Board of Accounts, the agency charged with collecting compensation data for every unit of government in Indiana.

The attorney general's opinion was issued at the State Board of Accounts' request and after receiving input from the hospital association, said Bryan Corbin, a spokesperson for Zoeller's office.

Paul Joyce, state examiner with the Board of Accounts, said he wants to ensure the law is interpreted and applied the same way to all public hospitals. Right now, it isn't.

This year, fewer than half the state's county hospitals filed compensation disclosure forms with the state.

"My goal," Joyce said, "is 100 percent compliance."

That may prove harder than it sounds. In this situation, the state is powerless to enforce the law.

For all other units of government, failure to file the right forms means the State Board of Accounts won't approve the next year's appropriations. No compensation forms, no money.

But few, if any, county hospitals receive taxpayer funds. There isn't a funding stream for the state to cut off.

Historically, public hospitals were closely tied to the counties that created them, Grover said. They were often supported by property taxes paid by residents and funds were kept and managed by the county itself.

Now, Grover said he doesn't know of any hospitals in Indiana that receive taxpayer dollars.

"We're county hospitals because it took an act of the county to form us," he said. "A county hospital can function on its own."

This leaves Joyce and the State Board of Accounts in an awkward predicament.

"How," Joyce asked, "do you hold them accountable?"

It would take legislation to create a new method for enforcing the law, but there are other issues at stake here, including accountability and access to public records.

Although they may not be units of government in the same way state agencies or city councils are, county hospitals are still accountable to the people of the state, even if they don't receive money generated by taxes, said Steve Key, executive director of the Hoosier State Press Association.

Key said the compensation should be reported to the state and made publicly available upon request.

By January, when the compensation disclosure forms are due, Joyce said he and the board hope to be done reviewing their options. That's when they should know whether or not they'll be publishing county hospital salaries online next year.

Until then, the data is out there — at least for the 12 county hospitals that reported compensation.

Call Star reporter Michael Auslen at (317) 444-6077. Follow him on Twitter: @MichaelAuslen.