What are the red flags for Pete November?

Pete November

Trustee, term 2026-2028

President & CEO | Ochsner Health

Last verified November 4, 2026

5 Red Flags

Affiliations

•President and CEO of Ochsner Health since November 2022, succeeding Warner Thomas; previously Ochsner's executive vice president of digital health, chief financial officer and chief administrative officer.
•Elected by AHA in November 2025 to fill a board vacancy for a term running January 1, 2026 through December 31, 2028.
•Board member and Treasurer of the National World War II Museum; also sits on the Business Council of New Orleans and the River Region, the Committee of 100 and the University of Kentucky Visiting Committee.
•Certified public accountant with a bachelor's in accounting and a law degree from the University of Kentucky.
•Adjunct professor at the University of Queensland College of Medicine and adjunct professor and guest lecturer at Loyola University New Orleans College of Business.
•Named to Modern Healthcare's 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare.

Financial / Compensation

•November was paid $6,112,385 in reportable compensation plus $899,128 in other compensation by Ochsner Clinic Foundation in FY2024, per its Form 990.
•Schedule J breakdown (FY2024, Ochsner Clinic Foundation): base salary $2.08M, bonus and incentive $3.91M, other reportable $120,102, retirement and deferred $866,860, nontaxable benefits $32,268; total $7.01M. Bonus and incentive pay was 56% of the total.
•His reportable pay rose from $4,183,651 in FY2023 to $6,112,385 in FY2024, a 46% one-year increase, and has roughly tripled from $1,936,112 in FY2020.
•He was not the highest-paid person at Ochsner in FY2024: Benjamin Peeler, MD was paid $6,742,839; Ochsner reported $41.1 million in total executive compensation that year.
•Predecessor Warner Thomas was paid $10,003,805 in his final year (2022) before leaving Ochsner in November 2022.
•Ochsner Clinic Foundation's FY2024 Form 990 shows $6.04 billion in revenue, $5.71 billion in expenses and $325.1 million in net income, up from $5.37 billion in revenue in FY2023.
•Systemwide, Ochsner reported 2024 operating revenue of $7.7 billion, operating income of $157.8 million (a 2.0% margin), net income of $243.1 million and 117 days cash on hand.
•Ochsner's Schedule L for FY2024 reports conflict-of-interest transactions with interested persons; ProPublica's extract does not detail them.
•Full-year 2025 audited results and the FY2025 Form 990 were not publicly extracted as of November 2026.

Lobbying and Political

•Ochsner and its outside firms reported about $1.70 million in federal lobbying for 2025 in Senate LDA filings: $800,000 in-house plus Venable, The Picard Group and Mehlman Consulting ($200,000 each), Jones Walker ($170,000), Miller Strategies ($90,000) and Strategic Health Care ($37,500).
•Through the first three quarters of 2026, Ochsner's federal lobbying totaled about $1.25 million, including $600,000 in-house and $450,000 paid to Miller Strategies, with Strategic Health Care, Cornerstone Government Affairs and Jones Walker also retained.
•The jump in Miller Strategies billings, from $90,000 in 2025 to $450,000 in the first three quarters of 2026, makes it Ochsner's largest outside lobbying firm in 2026.
•Ochsner maintains registered lobbyists with the Louisiana Board of Ethics; state spending totals were not verified for this dossier.
•As an AHA trustee, November now helps steer the industry's main federal lobbying operation, which reported more than $25 million in in-house federal lobbying expenses in 2025.

Revolving Door

•No federal or state government employment is publicly reported for November; his career has been inside Ochsner's finance, legal-administrative and digital units.
•Civic seats on the Business Council of New Orleans and the Committee of 100 place him inside Louisiana's main business-policy networks.

Home System Record

•Ochsner Health's charity care at cost was $82.4M (latest hospital tax returns), 107% of the estimated $77.2M 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).
•Ochsner Health has 421 340B contract pharmacy arrangements registered with HRSA (OPAIS registry, Sept. 29, 2026).
•Ochsner operates 47 hospitals and more than 370 health and urgent care centers across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, with about 40,000 employees as of 2025.
•In May 2023, months into his tenure, November announced 770 layoffs (about 2% of staff) in management, administrative and clerical roles after Ochsner lost $96 million in 2022, its first unprofitable year in over a decade.
•Ochsner's operating income recovered from a 2022 loss to $157.8 million in 2024, while November's pay rose 56% over FY2022-FY2024.
•In December 2025 Ochsner signed a letter of intent for a non-merger clinical affiliation with Allegiance Health System, which runs rural hospitals in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi; this extends Ochsner's referral reach without an acquisition review.
•Ochsner's 2021 absorption of Rush Health System in Mississippi and Alabama and its earlier Lafayette General merger built it into the dominant system in much of Louisiana.
•In March 2026 Ochsner began a collaboration with Cognito Therapeutics on an investigational neuromodulation device for Alzheimer's patients.

Litigation and Scrutiny

•On March 24, 2026, a federal judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana dismissed for the second and final time a worker class action over Ochsner's use of forfeited 401(k) contributions, finding the amended complaint misstated the plan language.
•No new False Claims Act settlements, antitrust suits or state attorney general actions against Ochsner in 2025 or 2026 were found in public reporting.

Red Flags

November's pay jumped 46% in one year to $6.11 million plus $899,128 in other compensation in FY2024, while the system's operating margin was 2.0%.

A tax-exempt system with $325 million in FY2024 net income at its main entity pays at least two executives more than $6 million each.

His first major act as CEO in 2023 was cutting 770 jobs; executive pay then rose sharply as margins recovered.

Ochsner spent about $1.7 million on federal lobbying in 2025 and $1.25 million in the first nine months of 2026, with outside firm spending shifting heavily to Miller Strategies.

Ochsner's market dominance in Louisiana keeps growing through mergers and affiliation agreements, such as the 2025 Allegiance LOI, that avoid full merger review.

Pattern Summary

Pete November is a CPA and lawyer who rose through Ochsner's finance office and now runs Louisiana's dominant tax-exempt system. Under him Ochsner went from a 2022 loss to a $243 million net gain in 2024, helped by 770 layoffs, while his own pay climbed to more than $7 million in total compensation. Ochsner keeps a steady seven-figure federal lobbying operation and widens its regional footprint through affiliations rather than reviewable mergers. His AHA seat gives a high-paid Gulf Coast nonprofit executive a vote on the industry's federal lobbying agenda.

Pete November

Red Flags

Sources and Citations