Within health systems, salaries rose by 2.8 percent while salaries at hospitals grew by 2.5 percent, according to the 2012 Survey of Manager and Executive Compensation in Hospitals and Health Systems by Sullivan, Cotter and Associates Inc., a health care compensation and human resources management consulting firm.

These figures reflect the projected 2012 salary increases for health systems of 2.9 percent. Hospital salaries, however, are slightly lower than the estimated 2012 salary increases of 2.9 percent.

"Moderate salary increase budgets continue to be the trend – the reported data indicate projected manager and executive salary increase budgets will hover around 3 percent," says Tom Pavlik, managing principal at Sullivan, Cotter and Associates. "In addition, we saw a decline in the number of systems and hospitals that provided no salary increases last year."