Worksheet S-3, Part II on the Medicare Cost Report is used to report wages and the related hours. Part III is just a summary of Part II. This information is used to calculate the wage index for the labor-related portion of the national average standardized amounts of the PPS. That just means that these amounts are used in the calculations of Medicare payments to the hospital.

First, we’ll take a look at line 1 - total salaries. These are direct salaries and wages, including the amounts for related paid vacation, holiday, sick leave, other PTO, severance pay, and bonus pay.

Hospital	FYE	Salaries
AU Medical Center	6/30/2021	$247,057,342
University Hospital	12/31/2021	$171,611,443
Doctors Hospital	3/31/2022	$98,197,534
Burke Medical Center	12/31/2021	$3,046,736
University Hospital McDuffie	12/31/2021	$6,744,296

AU Medical Center wins for most salaries. Wow!

A note on Burke Medical Center. This cost report is a short-period cost report with a start date of 6/22/2021 and end date of 12/31/2021. My guess is a full year of salaries would be close to what you see for University Hospital McDuffie.

In my last post on S-3 Pt I for these hospitals, we saw AU Medical had 3,706 employees on payroll (or FTE equivalents), whereas University Hospital only had 2,416 employees. The salary difference makes sense knowing the spread between FTEs on these two hospitals.

Contracted Interns & Residents

Line 7.01 is for the contracted interns & residents in an approved program. These will be your doctors in training.

Hospital	FYE	I&R Salaries
AU Medical Center	6/30/2021	$27,462,879
University Hospital	12/31/2021	$741,890

Again, based on data reported on S-3 Pt I, AU Medical has 507 Interns & Residents and University has 7.

Home Office Salaries

The only hospital in this list with a home office is Doctors Hospital. They are managed by HCA out of Nashville. The reported home office salaries are $25 million.

Wage Related Costs

Lines 17 - 25.53 are where the hospitals report wage related costs. We’ll dive deeper into these figures in a later post on S-3 Pt IV.

Average Hourly Wage

These figures are interesting to look at, but there are many unknown variables. I think the biggest one is these numbers will be audited before being used in the wage index. So, there’s time for hospitals to fix mistakes. There is also time to make sure all costs are accounted for. All that being said, you can’t know for sure that Doctors Hospital pays better just because their average hourly wage is higher. So many jobs roll up in these figures and with Doctors Hospital having a Burn Unit it could be just this department moving the needle. Or not. But it is really fun to take a look to see how everyone lines up.

S-3 Pt III

This worksheet nets the hospital down to essentially what would be used in the wage index calculation. There some excluded departments that get removed and physicians’ teaching salaries. Let’s see how the hospitals stack up.

Hospital	FYE	Avg Hrly Wage
AU Medical Center	6/30/2021	$39.99
University Hospital	12/31/2021	$42.73
Doctors Hospital	3/31/2022	$46.74
Burke Medical Center	12/31/2021	$36.84
University Hospital McDuffie	12/31/2021	$35.86

Musing Revelation

I’m still just digging through these hospitals one worksheet at a time; attempting to learn what can be gleaned from their Medicare Cost Reports. AU Medical Center has a ton of Interns & Residents that they are training and those salaries are big dollars. Doctors Hospital is the only hospital in the area with home office and related organization dollars reported. These are just two small things I gleaned from these two worksheets alone.
It’s also interesting to see how the smaller, more rural hospitals compare to the urban ones in metro Augusta. Burke Medical and University Hospital McDuffie may have a lower average hourly wage, but it is not that much lower. They still have to be decently competitive with the big dogs on wages.

Next time, we’ll take a look at Worksheet S-3 Pt IV and V: Wage Related Costs and Contract Labor & Benefits.

Worksheet S-3 Pt II

Worksheet S-3 Pt III