Ontario Hospital & Healthcare Salaries: Inside the 2025 Sunshine List
Ontario's Largest Healthcare Employers
University Health Network tops the list with 4,581 employees and $600 million in disclosed payroll - more than any other single hospital network in the province. London Health Sciences and Hamilton Health Sciences follow, each with over 3,500 employees and close to half a billion dollars in disclosed compensation.
Together, the ten largest hospital networks account for over $3.8 billion in payroll - more than the entire Ontario police sector combined. The sector spans 334 separate organizations, from major academic health sciences centres to regional community hospitals and specialty care providers.
The Hospital for Sick Children pays the highest average salary of any major Ontario hospital - $139,143 per disclosed employee - driven by its concentration of specialist physicians and research scientists.
Average Salary by Major Hospital
Average pay varies significantly across hospital networks. SickKids leads at $139,143, reflecting a workforce heavily concentrated in high-paid specialist and research roles. Ontario Health - the provincial agency overseeing the system - averages $128,892, while most large regional hospitals cluster between $122,000 and $132,000.
The $100,000 Sunshine List threshold was set in 1996 and has never been adjusted for inflation. In healthcare, where salaries have grown steadily with each round of collective bargaining, this means an ever-larger share of nurses, allied health professionals, and administrators now appear on the list each year.
Top 15 Highest-Paid Healthcare Employees (2025)
Every name on the list below links to their full salary history on the Ontario Sunshine List Directory. Kevin Smith, CEO of University Health Network, is the highest-paid healthcare employee in Ontario at $939,603 - more than any police chief, university president, or municipal official on the 2025 list.
| Name | Title | Employer | 2025 Salary | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kevin Smith | President & CEO | University Health Network | $939,603 |
| 2 | Ronald Cohn | President & CEO | The Hospital for Sick Children | $880,013 |
| 3 | Matthew Anderson | President & CEO | Ontario Health | $826,000 |
| 4 | Barbara Collins | President & CEO | Humber River Health | $760,359 |
| 5 | Andy Smith | President & CEO | Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre | $757,365 |
| 6 | Cameron Love | President & CEO | The Ottawa Hospital | $744,248 |
| 7 | David Graham | President & CEO | Scarborough Health Network | $705,941 |
| 8 | Frank Martino | President & CEO | William Osler Health System | $692,459 |
| 9 | Gary Newton | President & CEO | Sinai Health System | $684,004 |
| 10 | Timothy Rutledge | President & CEO | Unity Health Toronto | $675,196 |
| 11 | Karli Farrow | President & CEO | Trillium Health Partners | $663,622 |
| 12 | Prakash Muthusami | Chief Financial Officer | The Hospital for Sick Children | $662,439 |
| 13 | Birgit Betina Ertl-Wagner | Physician-in-Chief | The Hospital for Sick Children | $656,170 |
| 14 | Ronald Gagnon | President & CEO | Waterloo Regional Health Network | $640,357 |
| 15 | Lynn Guerriero | President & CEO | Niagara Health System | $638,450 |
UHN: Ontario's Largest Hospital Employer
University Health Network - which encompasses Toronto General, Toronto Western, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, and Toronto Rehab - is the single largest healthcare employer on the Sunshine List. Its 4,581 disclosed employees earned a combined $600.4 million, with an average salary of $131,063. CEO Kevin Smith's $939,603 package includes a mix of base salary and performance compensation.
SickKids CEO Ronald Cohn, the second-highest earner at $880,013, leads a hospital with only 2,249 disclosed employees - but the highest average salary in the province at $139,143, a reflection of its research-heavy mandate and concentration of specialist physicians. Compare that to Ontario's police sector, where the average officer salary is $149,996 - showing that frontline healthcare workers generally earn less than their law enforcement counterparts despite similar training demands.
53,787 healthcare workers earned over $100,000 in 2025 - more than double the 25,388 police officers on the same list, and nearly four times the 14,085 TDSB staff.
Healthcare vs. Other Sectors
The scale of Ontario's healthcare payroll dwarfs every other public sector category. At $6.86 billion, it exceeds the energy sector's $1.97 billion (explored in our energy sector analysis) and the policing sector's $3.8 billion. Even the province's school boards - led by TDSB's $1.78 billion payroll - fall well short. Healthcare's footprint on the Sunshine List reflects both the sector's size and the rapid salary growth driven by pandemic-era collective bargaining and nursing retention pressures.
With the $100,000 threshold unchanged since 1996, and healthcare salaries rising 5-7% annually through recent rounds of bargaining, the healthcare sector's representation on the Sunshine List is expected to keep expanding. To search individual employees or explore any hospital's full salary data, visit the Ontario Sunshine List Directory.