Executive directors of continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs) again saw the largest pay raise among their salaried coworkers in the last year.
The national average salary for a CCRC or life plan community executive director is currently $166,402, an increase of roughly 4% over 2017’s average executive director salary of $159,898, according to the latest edition of the Continuing Care Retirement Community Salary & Benefits Report. The report is an annual publication from the Hospital & Healthcare Compensation Service, endorsed by provider association LeadingAge. That roughly 4% increase only includes respondents who participated in both the 2017 and 2018 reports.
For the second year in a row, executive directors saw the highest spike in average salaries among all salaried positions tracked in the report. Last year, they earned on average 4.15% more than they did in 2016. As with last year’s data, wages widely varied among geographic regions in 2018.
This year’s report includes 502 responses from CCRCs or life plan communities, about 18% of which were for-profit, with the rest not-for-profit.
Executive directors weren’t the only salaried CCRC employees who saw a sizable bump in pay in the past 12 months. Chief financial officers, for instance, saw an average salary of $147,134 this year, a 3.89% increase from their average salary in 2017.
CCRC executive directors also take home an average bonus of nearly $28,000, according to the report.
Base pay increased 2.8% between April 2017 and March 2018 for all CCRC management positions nationally, according to the report. For non-management positions, a term that doesn’t include clinical roles such as RNs, LPNs, and CNAs, base pay grew 2.74% on average in the same period of time.
In the year ahead, survey respondents said on average they planned a 2.76% raise for employees in management positions, and a 2.74% pay increase for non-management workers.
A tight senior living labor market might help explain why many CCRCs are paying their executive directors more, year-over-year. And while there has been uncertainty in the past about whether the CCRC business model has staying power in the senior living industry, the product type is likely here for good, having flown high on economic tailwinds as of late.
Additionally, Americans will likely spend an increasing amount of money on health care at CCRCs through 2026, according to a 2018 report from the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Written by Tim Regan
Companies featured in this article:
