For the guy who just opened a $300 bill from Lancaster General Health for five minutes worth of blood work, the six- and seven-figure compensation for top LGH officials may be enough to get that blood boiling.

But LGH's compensation appears to be in line with industry standards. In fact, you might make a case that Lancaster General President and CEO Tom Beeman is underpaid.

To put LGH compensation in context, Lancaster Newspapers compared it with compensation at five regional hospitals or health systems about the same size as Lancaster General: Wellspan Health, in York County; Pinnacle Health, in Dauphin County; Reading Health, in Berks County; Lehigh Valley Health, in Lehigh County; and the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, also in Dauphin County.

The figures show that Beeman got less than the top executives at four of the five comparable institutions.

In 2010, Beeman made $1.35 million in total compensation.

• Click here for a slideshow of the highest compensated executives at LGH

• Click here for a searchable database of health system compensation in central Pa.

At Pinnacle (2010 revenues: $619 million), retiring CEO Roger Longenderfer got $3.59 million in total compensation — though that figure was skewed by more than $900,000 in severance pay, according to Pinnacle's form 990. His base pay that year ($588,568) was actually less than Beeman's ($606,728).

At Lehigh Valley Health (2010 revenues: $1.36 billion), retiring CEO Elliot J. Sussman took home compensation of $1.66 million.

At Reading Health (2010 revenues: $826.9 million), retiring Senior Vice President Steven I. Finkel ($5.8 million) and president Scott Wolfe ($2.33 million) both took home more than Beeman; however, as at Pinnacle, both figures were skewed by large severance payments ($5.2 million for Finkel, $1.4 million for Wolfe).

Only Harold Paz, CEO at Hershey Medical Center (2010 revenues: $1.02 billion), made less than Beeman, with total compensation of $1.03 million.

LGH does appear to have more executives who earned total compensation of $250,000 or more in 2010 than health systems of comparable size.

A total of 21 LGH executives earned total compensation of $250,000 or more in 2010. At Wellspan and Lehigh Valley Health, both larger than LGH, the figure was 20.

At Pinnacle, which is a third smaller than LGH in terms of revenues, just 11 executives hit that benchmark.

At Reading Health, which is slightly smaller than LGH, the number was 17 — although that figure is skewed by the fact that the system hired a consultant in 2010, which in turn hired an interim CEO, chief operating officer and chief financial officer. While Reading Health paid the consultant more than $7 million, the consultant did not disclose what it paid those executives, according to the health system's Form 990.

Complete information from Milton S. Hershey Medical Center was unavailable; the medical center does not file a Form 990 (its parent, Penn State University, does), and only three medical center employees were listed on that form as among the university's highest-paid employees.

Penn State spokesman Scott Gilbert declined to provide more information on medical center salaries, calling the data "confidential."

Of the top 20 highest-compensated executives among the six comparable hospitals, five were from LGH — Beeman, Executive Vice Presidents Jan Bergen and Marion A. McGowan, Senior Vice President Lee M. Duke MD, and then-CFO F. Joseph Byorick.

For the sake of comparison, the newspaper also analyzed figures from a significantly larger health care system — Geisinger Health, headquartered in Danville — and a much-smaller Ephrata Community Hospital here in Lancaster County.

At Ephrata (see related story, Page A6), just two executives took home more than $250,000 in total compensation in 2010.

But at Geisinger — with 2010-11 total revenues of $2.3 billion, more than double that of LGH — a whopping 43 executives earned that much, including three who got more than $1 million (and one more at $993,397; 18 got more than $500,000).

gsmart@lnpnews.com