CARTI Doctors Highest-Paid on Nonprofits List

Jan Burford

The highest-paid nonprofit physicians in Arkansas can be found at CARTI Inc. in Little Rock.

Of the top six positions on this year’s list of the highest-paid nonprofit employees ranked by total compensation, four are occupied by CARTI physicians.

CARTI’s Dr. Brad Baltz topped the list with total compensation of $2.3 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2015. Arkansas Business used nonprofits’ latest IRS Form 990s filed with Guidestar.org to compile the ranking.

St. Vincent Medical Group’s highest-compensated doctor, Ali Krisht, received $1.7 million. Krisht’s specialty is neurosurgery.

The highest paid physician at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences is Dr. Michiaki Imamura, who received $1.06 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2015. Imamura’s specialty is pediatric cardiac surgery. UAMS doesn’t file a Form 990, but its compensation information is publicly available.

Baptist Health of Little Rock didn’t have a list of physicians on its Form 990 because their employment is handled through the Arkansas Health Group, which is a separate entity. Its top physician, Derlis Martino, had $1.4 million in compensation for 2014. Martino’s specialty is general surgery.

(Get the List: The Highest-Paid Nonprofit Employees in Arkansas)

Pay for doctors varies by specialty, said Travis Singleton, senior vice president of Merritt Hawkins, a physician search and consulting firm based in Dallas. The highest-paying specialties are oncology, orthopedics and neurosurgery.

CARTI has six physicians who specialize in oncology and had a compensation package of more than $1 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2015. St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center had five doctors in various specialties who made more than $1 million.

Singleton also said compensation packages for doctors are based on where the physician practices, such as in an academic facility or a hospital.

In addition, the physician compensation system favors those who do procedures and punishes those who order tests, he said.

Family practice doctors are “never going to make the same amount of money [as specialists]; they just aren’t,” Singleton said.

The doctors’ compensation also is based on which payor is covering the procedure.

Oncologists are usually at the top of the highest-paid doctors in the country because the treatments they provide include highly innovative and highly complex procedures.

On top of that, there are only a few thousand physicians who specialize in oncology and its subsets, he said.

“And then when you start doing quick math of saying of those across the United States, who could fill this role, … you get down to a really small list really quick,” Singleton said.

CARTI Pay
Jan Burford, president and CEO of CARTI, said CARTI determines its physician pay based on a compensation study by a third party.

“We can change compensation, but you would not retain good doctors if you went too much below that market level,” Burford recently told Arkansas Business.

CARTI has 26 physicians on staff.

Burford said the doctors have a base pay and then an additional amount that’s tied to productivity. “If their volumes fall, their base pay could fall,” Burford said. “But ours don’t fall.”

In fact, the CARTI doctors are some of the busiest in the country, she said.

The consulting firm, Berkeley Research Group of Emeryville, California, agreed that the “doctors were highly compensated, but they are highly productive,” Burford said. “When you’ve got doctors that are working 12-hour days and seeing tons of patients, it ends up being a higher compensation.”

The doctors who are building up their practice don’t make enough to appear on the list of highest-paid employees.

“So it’s the real experienced doctors who have a very large number of patients that appear” on the list, Burford said.

Highest-Paid Nonprofit Physicians in Pulaski County

Total Compensation at fiscal year end (June 30)

Note: The compensation reports don’t indicate if the physician was paid for an entire or partial year.
Source: Form 990s filed with the Internal Revenue Service and accessed through Guidestar.org, CARTI Inc., UAMS, Arkansas State Medical Board