Officials at Jewish Hospital and St. Mary’s Healthcare are bracing for an upcoming Courier-Journal report that will shed light on how the non-profit gave bonuses to its leadership team just months before putting a salary freeze and other cost-cutting measures in place.

The C-J story, we hear, will focus on compensation at several healthcare operations in Louisville.

Jewish CEO Bob Shircliff sent a company-wide memo to employees on May 4 explaining the salary freeze, blaming the economy, lower patient volume and stock market losses.

Then, on May 28, Shircliff alerted his leadership team of the impending C-J article, providing talking points about the bonuses awarded to 140 leaders in early 2009. Jewish, of course, doesn’t refer to them as bonuses, but as part of annual compensation packages for its leadership team that is “at risk” every year. Jewish had not awarded the “at risk” portion in four years, Shircliff wrote, but did so based on meeting the “overall operating performance” of the organization that year.

In 2008, Jewish produced a $2 million profit on nearly $1 billion in revenue. By comparison, our sources say Norton Healthcare is on track to make many times that number in profit in 2009.

While Jewish made money in 2008, and it employs an independent compensation committee to review the money paid, it’s hard to think no one on the Jewish board saw that things weren’t going in the right direction when the decision was made to award the bonus money.