University of Minnesota health care consulting fees adding up — at $800 to $1,600 per hour

The University of Minnesota two years ago was paying its finance chief $436,349 in salary plus benefits. He then retired and effectively doubled his money by becoming a U health care consultant.

Myron Frans, who’s now earning $800 per hour consulting on health care issues that he worked on in his former job, has generated compensation of about $1.1 million in his first year, making him one of the highest-paid people at the U, according to records obtained by the Minnesota Star Tribune.

The pay is attracting scrutiny as the university’s budget woes are driving job cuts and accusations of administrative bloat. Meanwhile, doctors are increasingly worried about the deal Frans is negotiating for a revamped health system, one that could change funding for Minnesota’s largest medical school and the U’s specialty care.

Some say the pay just looks wrong.

“That kind of fee for our public land grant university — that is subsidized by the state and by taxpayer funds — is inappropriate‚" said James Farnsworth, a member of the U’s Board of Regents. “I think it’s too high.”

Officials at the U say Frans and other outside advisors have been worth every penny. The university, they say, needs expertise for ongoing negotiations with Fairview Health Services — and health care consulting fees are typically high.

They say Frans is an expert in the U’s partnership with Fairview, which owns the university’s teaching hospital in Minneapolis. The two entities have a critical joint venture — M Health Fairview — that operates hospitals and clinics while funding research and training for health professionals. Frans was hired as a consultant to help broker a new deal before the current partnership expires at the end of 2026.

“The compensation for these contributions aligns with projects of this magnitude, importance and complexity, and is comparable to averages for health care industry expertise required for this work,” the U said in a statement. A university official called Frans “the quarterback of the team that is really driving the solution for all Minnesota health.”

The U declined to make Frans available for comment.

A key challenge with evaluating Frans’ pay is that the negotiations he’s involved with are private and ongoing. Even so, Farnsworth said the compensation is “not a good look.”

“I think it’s understandable for a board member such as myself, who has a fiduciary duty, and the public to go: ‘Hey, what’s going on here?’” Farnsworth said.

The university’s Board of Regents last month passed a $5.1 billion budget for its 2026 fiscal year that critics said went too heavy on administrative costs while cutting academic programs.

Payments for consultants might not be driving the larger budget debate, but the high hourly rates are being questioned as the university makes cuts elsewhere.

In December, the U gave a new contract to Frans that set no cap on his billable hours for 2025 and boosted his hourly rate from $700 last year to $800, according to disclosures the Minnesota Star Tribune obtained through public records requests. Dr. Rebecca Cunningham, the U’s president, signed the paperwork.

The university is also paying health care advisors at the firm Alvarez & Marsal anywhere from $300 to $875 per hour. And longtime health care consultant Cliff Stromberg is billing at $1,606 per hour — a 15% discount from his normal rate, the documents show.

Collectively, these consultants, along with investment banking firm Raymond James, have received from, or billed, the university just over $4.9 million between February 2024 and May 2025.

Frans is affable and quick-witted, an attorney by training who’s been a prominent public figure in Minnesota for more than a decade.

As a consultant, he holds one of the U’s designated seats on the board of directors at Fairview.

Frans’ contract says he provides services, advice and counsel to the university regarding the M Health Fairview collaboration and the contractual relationship between the U and Fairview, plus other services as assigned by Cunningham.

“Myron Frans has been an essential part of the multidisciplinary team proposing a new path forward for health care in Minnesota,” the U of M said in a statement. “His unique combination of public service, finance, health care and higher education administration experience is critical for the solution we’ve proposed to improve health for all Minnesotans.”

In September 2020, he joined the U where he was head of both finance and operations.

After the U announced in early 2024 that Frans would retire, he continued for several months as health care advisor to interim U president Jeffrey Ettinger, who approved his initial $700-an-hour arrangement in summer 2024 for up to 660 hours over 33 weeks.

Cunningham, who became U of M president last summer, last year approved raising the limit on his billable hours to 880.

None of the agreements hit the $5 million mark that triggers review by the Board of Regents.

The pay jump for Frans when he moved from full-time employee to outside consultant “makes absolutely no sense,” said Richard Painter, a professor of corporate law at the U of M who, for two years, was the chief White House ethics lawyer in the administration of President George W. Bush.

“He’s not a hospital manager — that’s not his industry sector," Painter said. “[It’s] not that we’re hiring the former CEO of a major hospital to negotiate for us and to put this deal together.”

Rep. Kristin Robbins, R-Maple Grove, alluded to pay for Frans after it was first reported this spring in the Star Tribune during a House committee meeting in May.

“This is one of the reasons college is very unaffordable,” Robbins said in an interview, referring to pay for top U administrators as well as payments to consultants like Frans. “He more than doubled his salary, becoming a consultant.”

Frans is also navigating discontent among the U’s physicians who are key stakeholders in the deal.

An influential group of 26 department heads within the Medical School last month wrote to U regents expressing frustration — much like cardiologists who spoke out previously — with the apparent lack of progress towards an agreement.

“We have concerns with how the process to define our clinical future is unfolding and are deeply uncertain about the future success of the Medical School,” they wrote in the letter obtained by the Star Tribune. “If [the Fairview contract is] not effectively renewed this year, the Medical School is in great jeopardy.”

Gregg Goldman, the university’s executive vice president for finance and operations, insists key university physicians have been supportive of the U’s goals, including a proposed merger between Fairview and Duluth-based Essentia Health.

Cumulative pay and billings since May 2024 come to about $1.16 million for Frans — more than nearly every U employee except coaches.

Records show only four people last year at the U of M had cash compensation exceeding $1 million, including football coach P.J. Fleck ($6.6 million), men’s basketball coach Ben Johnson ($2.3 million) and athletic director Mark Coyle ($1.88 million).

Cunningham’s annual salary was $975,000, while U Medical School dean Dr. Jakub Tolar had $953,772 in cash compensation last year. None of those includes the value of fringe benefits.

Goldman argued that pay comparisons between Frans, the Gophers football coach and other U officials aren’t appropriate because they’re all doing very different jobs. He referenced annual CEO pay for Fairview’s James Hereford ($3.2 million) and Essentia Health’s David Herman ($3.1 million) — both of whom are in the private sector.

Frans’ consulting role is “distinctly different,” a U spokesperson says, than his work as an employee. Goldman noted how the focus has shifted from the U trying to buy back its teaching hospital to talks mediated by an outside facilitator.

“What was envisioned by interim president Ettinger as a part-time engagement has led to a lot more hours than were originally planned because of the complexity,” said Goldman, who succeeded Frans as the U’s finance chief. “It’s extremely more robust ... very much more complex in a lot of ways, than his role might have been in the chair I’m currently in.”