What are the red flags for Laura S. Kaiser?

Laura S. Kaiser

2027 Chair-elect; 2028 Chair

President & CEO | SSM Health

Last verified November 4, 2026

6 Red Flags

Affiliations

•She has been President & CEO of SSM Health, the St. Louis-based Catholic system, since 2017. SSM has more than 40,000 employees, 24 hospitals, more than 540 physician offices and outpatient sites and 11 post-acute facilities across Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Oklahoma.
•The AHA board named her Chair-elect Designate on July 12, 2026. She will be Chair-elect in 2027 and AHA Board Chair in 2028. She already sits on the AHA Executive Committee and chairs the AHA Operations Committee.
•She has been an independent director of Merit Medical Systems, a publicly traded maker of medical devices, since May 2022, serving on its Governance & Sustainability and Compensation & Talent Development committees. She was earlier a director of Nuance Communications (2017-2022).
•She chairs the board of Navitus Health Solutions, a pharmacy benefit manager. SSM Health reports PBM revenue as a line of its business.
•She chaired the Catholic Health Association board of trustees from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023. She is a former director of Joint Commission Resources, the Joint Commission's consulting affiliate.
•She also sits on the boards of Greater St. Louis Inc. and the Seton Shrine National Leaders Council.
•Before SSM she was EVP & COO of Intermountain Healthcare. Earlier, at Ascension, she was regional executive for the Gulf Coast/Florida region and President & CEO of Sacred Heart Health System in Pensacola.

Financial / Compensation

•Her 2024 compensation, reported on the Form 990 of SSM affiliate SSM Audrain Health Care, was $5,205,665 from related organizations plus $2,681,148 in other compensation, about $7.89 million in total.
•Schedule J breakdown (FY2024, SSM Health Care Corporation and four related returns): base salary $2.16M, bonus and incentive $2.24M, other reportable $803,415, retirement and deferred $2.66M, nontaxable benefits $24,591; total $7.89M. Bonus and incentive pay was 28% of the total.
•Her total pay was about $1.59 million in 2017, $2.73 million in 2018, $4.18 million in 2019, $5.18 million in 2020, $5.70 million in 2021, $8.38 million in 2022, $7.65 million in 2023 and $7.89 million in 2024: roughly $43 million over eight years.
•Her 2024 pay of about $7.89 million came in a year SSM Health posted a $70 million operating loss (-0.6% margin).
•SSM Health's 2025 results: total operating revenue of $12.7 billion (up from $11.4 billion), operating income of $148.5 million (1.2% margin) and net income of $483.6 million, nearly double 2024's $249.3 million.
•SSM's 2025 revenue included $2.6 billion in pharmacy benefit manager revenue, up from $2.2 billion. That is about one-fifth of the system's top line, on top of $7.3 billion in net patient service revenue.
•Other 2024 SSM executive pay included Steven Smoot at about $3.48 million total and Douglas Long at about $2.29 million total.

Lobbying and Political

•SSM Health hired Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath as its federal lobbying firm effective January 20, 2022, on Medicare graduate medical education, COVID provider relief, health equity and behavioral health. The firm's lobbyists include former aides to Reps. Chris Smith, Glenn Grothman and Susie Lee and Sen. Maria Cantwell.
•In Wisconsin, SSM Health authorized lobbyist Alex Ignatowski on January 14, 2025 for the 2025-2026 session, on Medicaid reimbursement, postpartum Medicaid coverage, licensure compacts, the health care workforce and APRN scope of practice.
•As AHA chair in 2028, she will lead the board of an association that reported $25.47 million in federal lobbying in 2025.

Revolving Door

•She serves on the board of a publicly traded medical device maker (Merit Medical) while running a health system that buys medical devices and while moving up the AHA chair line.
•She chairs a pharmacy benefit manager's board (Navitus) while AHA attacks PBMs and insurers for squeezing hospitals.
•She is a past chair of the Catholic Health Association, the lobbying and advocacy arm for Catholic systems on tax exemption and the 340B program.
•No government service is publicly reported.

Home System Record

•SSM Health's charity care at cost was $68.1M (latest hospital tax returns), 33% of the estimated $208M a year its tax exemptions are worth (Rojas Report estimate: federal and state income tax plus property tax on hospital land and buildings; sales tax not counted).
•SSM Health has 1,128 340B contract pharmacy arrangements registered with HRSA (OPAIS registry, Sept. 29, 2026).
•SSM swung from a $70 million operating loss in 2024 to $148.5 million in operating income in 2025, with net income of $483.6 million.
•In her first year, 2017, SSM laid off 350 employees (about 1% of its workforce) to ensure 'long-term sustainability.' In April 2020 it furloughed about 2,000 employees, roughly 5% of staff, for 13 weeks.
•In 2018 SSM agreed to sell three rural Missouri hospitals (St. Mary's-Jefferson City and St. Mary's-Audrain to MU Health Care, St. Francis-Maryville to Mosaic). In 2020 it ended trauma, complex cardiac and neuro surgery and labor and delivery at SSM Health St. Joseph Hospital in St. Charles, Mo.
•In 2023 SSM signed a 10-year partnership with Siemens Healthineers, a medical equipment vendor.

Litigation and Scrutiny

•In Doe v. SSM Health Care Corporation, a Missouri class action filed December 5, 2022, SSM is accused of sending MyChart patients' health information to Meta and other third parties without consent. The settlement got preliminary approval September 2, 2025, offering $31.50 per claimant plus identity protection, with a final approval hearing November 21, 2025.
•SSM Health and partner Navvis settled a class action over a July 2023 ransomware breach for $6.5 million without admitting wrongdoing (St. Louis Circuit Court, No. 2422-CC00208-01). The final approval hearing was July 10, 2025.

Red Flags

Her pay rose from about $1.6 million in 2017 to about $7.9 million in 2024, and was $7.9 million in a year SSM lost $70 million on operations.

Her compensation is reported through related organizations on an affiliate's 990 (SSM Audrain) rather than on a systemwide parent filing, which makes it harder to trace.

About $2.6 billion of SSM's revenue comes from a pharmacy benefit business, and she chairs a PBM's board while AHA lobbies against PBM and insurer practices.

She holds a public-company board seat at medical device maker Merit Medical while running a system that buys devices.

SSM settled a Meta-pixel privacy class action and a $6.5 million ransomware breach class action in 2025.

SSM has cut rural and community services (three Missouri hospital sales in 2018, trauma and obstetrics cuts in St. Charles in 2020) while paying its CEO more than $5 million a year since 2020.

Pattern Summary

Laura Kaiser runs SSM Health, a $12.7 billion Catholic system that now books a fifth of its revenue from a pharmacy benefit business, and she is in line to chair the AHA in 2028. Her pay rose nearly fivefold to about $7.9 million in 2024, a money-losing year for SSM, and she holds outside board seats at a device maker and a PBM. She is a Catholic Health Association veteran and AHA insider who embodies the vertically integrated, tax-exempt conglomerate the AHA defends.

Laura S. Kaiser

Red Flags

Sources and Citations