On April 10, 128 current Denver Health executives and one former employee were awarded $3.6 million in bonuses for reaching benchmarks, as reported by 9NEWS.

This comes shortly after workers were asked to take their paid leave and cut back on hours.

According to 9NEWS, Denver Health CEO, Robin Wittenstein, was paid $230,275 on top of her $967,155 salary,

Wittenstein sent workers this message on April 3: “The goal is to reduce our total salary expense without the need to lay off employees or implement mandatory PTO/furloughs”.

Wittenstein had recently cut her own salary by 30% and pledged $100,000 to the Denver Health Foundation.

However, the timing of these $3.6 million in bonuses raised eyebrows and caught the attention of Denver's Mayor Hancock.

“The Mayor expressed his concern to Dr. Wittenstein about the wisdom and timing of this decision,” his spokeswoman, Theresa Marchetta, told 9NEWS.

    • Among those in the plan, 7 had base salaries in excess of $500,000 and 32 more were paid at least $250,000 a year.
    • The lowest-paid employee in the plan has a base salary of $95,186, and was one of only two people in the program who made less than $100,000 a year.
    • Besides Wittenstein, Dr. Mitchell Cohen, the director of surgery, was the only other person to receive a bonus in the six-figure range – his was $114,723.
    • 23 people got bonuses of between $50,000 and $100,000.
    • 22 people got bonuses of between $20,000 and $50,000.
    • Most bonuses – 68 of them – were between $10,000 and $20,000.

 

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