University Times

As usual, Pitt’s five highest-paid, non-officer employees during the 2002-03 fiscal year were all School of Medicine professors. They included:
• James D. Luketich, an associate professor in the surgery department – $1,105,988 in salary and $24,176 in employer contributions to benefit plans.
• James Dong-Jin Kang, associate professor of orthopaedic surgery – $966,979 in salary and $21,092 in employer contributions to benefits.
• Philip R. Schauer, associate professor of surgery – $764,787 in salary and $21,092 in employer contributions to benefits.
• L. Dade Lunsford, professor and chair of neurological surgery – $737,228 in salary, $24,620 in employer contributions to benefits and $3,684 in educational benefits.
• Timothy R. Billiar, professor and chair of surgery – $680,448 in salary and $24,176 in employer contributions to benefits.
The numbers included the professors’ Pitt salaries plus income they earned for clinical work through the University of Pittsburgh Physicians (UPP) practice plan.
Compensation figures for those and other highly paid professors and executives appeared on Internal Revenue Service forms filed recently by Pitt, UPP and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC).
The IRS Form 990, a public document, requires tax-exempt, private corporations to reveal compensation figures for their five top-earning, non-officer employees as well as for officers, directors and trustees.
Pitt does not voluntarily release compensation information for its employees except for the chancellor and six other senior officers whose pay is set by the Board of Trustees compensation committee. Pitt officers’ current salaries, bonuses and special benefits were published in the Jan. 8, 2004, University Times, available at: www.pitt.edu/utimes/ut/html. Click on “Back Issues.”
Luketich, Kang and Lunsford also made last year’s Pitt top five.
Among the 1,033 full-time faculty members who earned Pitt salaries as well as clinical income through UPP last year, the average compensation was $207,156 and the median was $176,644, according to the Health Sciences News Bureau.
The News Bureau also stated that:
• 1 percent (12) of Pitt-UPP faculty members earned more than $500,000.
• 83 percent (856) earned $300,000 or less.
• 59 percent (611) made $200,000 or less.
• 35 percent (358) earned $150,000 or less.
The analysis did not include 73 part-time faculty members, 61 in one-year fellowships, 49 non-physicians, 75 mid-year hires and 70 mid-year terminations.

UPP
The five highest-paid employees other than officers, directors and trustees on UPP’s 990 form included faculty members Ronald V. Pellegrini ($981,988 in compensation and $15,480 in benefits), Luketich ($931,504 in compensation and $30,055 in benefits), Kang ($964,996 in compensation and $53,045 in benefits), Schauer ($621,929 in compensation and $18,043 in benefits) and Lawrence Wei ($573,419 in compensation and $17,630 in benefits).
UPP’s form also included compensation figures for UPP President Marshall Webster ($425,495 in compensation and $55,150 in benefits), secretary Loren H. Roth ($452,100 in compensation and $27,070 in benefits) and treasurer Richard L. Sweet ($257,650 in compensation and $25,677 in benefits) as well as 30 compensated board members.
They included:
Critical care department chair Mitchell P. Fink ($373,103 in compensation and $42,771 in benefits), anesthesiology chair John Williams ($429,999 in compensation and $54,895 in benefits), family medicine chair Jeannette South-Paul ($193,290 in compensation and $25,510 in benefits), orthopaedics chair Freddie H. Fu ($655,422 in compensation and $57,065 in benefits), medicine chair Mark L. Zeidel ($200,638 in compensation and $24,882 in benefits),
Psychiatry chair David J. Kupfer ($291,481 in compensation and $25,750 in benefits), radiation oncology chair Joel S. Greenberger ($288,161 in compensation and $25,661 in benefits), physical medicine and rehabilitation chair Ross D. Zafonte ($171,864 in compensation and $24,492 in benefits), neurology chair Steven T. DeKosky ($154,999 in compensation and $23,613 in benefits), emergency medicine chair Paul M. Paris ($293,913 in compensation and $46,527 in benefits),
Dermatology chair Louis D. Falo ($115,009 in compensation and $15,570 in benefits), otolaryngology chair Eugene N. Myers ($515,429 in compensation and $47,006 in benefits), pediatrics chair David Hirsch Perlmutter ($249,132 in compensation and $25,261 in benefits), Surgery professor Andrew B. Peitzman ($298,109 in compensation and $31,609 in benefits), pediatrics professor Lee B. Beerman ($68,820 in compensation and $12,136 in benefits), urology chair Joel Nelson ($327,790 in compensation and $22,973 in benefits), pathology professor Trevor A. MacPherson ($152,888 in compensation and $24,681 in benefits), associate professor of surgery Howard Edington ($198,100 in compensation and $26,888 in benefits), surgery professor Henri R. Ford ($122,874 in compensation and $11,215 in benefits), assistant professor of medicine Adele Towers ($12,337 in compensation and $2,013 in benefits), neurology professor Lawrence Wechsler ($96,050 in compensation and $15,952 in benefits),
Neurosurgery chair L. Dade Lunsford ($727,821 in compensation and $56,568 in benefits), pathology chair George Michalopoulos ($303,063 in compensation and $41,035 in benefits), surgery chair Timothy R. Billiar ($517,868 in compensation and $58,779 in benefits), radiology chair Scott A. Mirowitz ($414,000 in compensation and $44,868 in benefits), assistant professor of obstetrics/gynecology Margaret Watt-Morse ($82,415 in compensation and $12,596 in benefits from July through December 2002), medicine professor Susan Candace Hunt ($26,680 in compensation and $4,214 in benefits from July through December 2002), ophthalmology interim chair Michael Bruce Gorin ($74,262 in compensation and $13,569 in benefits), Cardiovascular Institute interim director Conrad Smith ($354,680 in compensation and $33,730 in benefits) and UPP senior vice president for finance and CFO Mark Benninghoff ($212,155 in compensation and $17,542 in benefits).

UPMC
UPMC’s 990 form did not list individual compensation figures for President Jeffrey A. Romoff and an unspecified number of other executives. Instead, their salaries (totaling $6,078,812) were grouped under a listing for a corporation called Managed Care Advisory Services, Inc., the contractor that received the most money last year from UPMC.
Romoff and Executive Vice President John W. Paul appeared on UPMC’s form only as unpaid members of the UPMC Board of Directors. Of the 64 board members (including Pitt Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg and Senior Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences Arthur Levine) only the board’s executive secretary was paid ($4,423) for UPMC board service.
– Bruce Steele