Deliverable · Sample artifact
What VHA actually receives.
Each facility's annual §7451 survey produces a signed report like the one below — comparator wage tables, the local-market reference, and a recommended Nurse Locality Pay schedule. This sample is built for the San Francisco VA Medical Center on the real BLS-anchored market; comparator wages and the grade schedule are illustrative pending the live survey.
Annual Nurse Locality Pay Survey · 38 U.S.C. §7451
San Francisco VA Medical Center
San Francisco, CA · VISN 21 · Survey period FY2026
Prepared for VHA by House Strategies Group
Local labor-market reference
Comparator employers surveyed
| Employer | Type | RN median |
|---|---|---|
| UCSF Medical Center | Academic medical center | $199,000 |
| Kaiser Permanente — San Francisco | Integrated health system | $196,000 |
| Stanford Health Care | Academic medical center | $192,000 |
| Sutter / CPMC | Community health system | $184,000 |
| Zuckerberg SF General | Public safety-net hospital | $181,000 |
| Dignity Health — St. Mary's | Community hospital | $178,000 |
| John Muir Health | Regional health system | $183,000 |
Recommended Nurse Locality Pay schedule
| Grade | Minimum | Midpoint | Maximum |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nurse I | $132,000 | $150,000 | $168,000 |
| Nurse II | $150,000 | $172,000 | $194,000 |
| Nurse III | $172,000 | $196,000 | $220,000 |
| Nurse IV | $196,000 | $224,000 | $252,000 |
| Nurse V | $224,000 | $256,000 | $288,000 |
Methodology & approval
Wages aged to a common effective date and weighted by employer size; the local-market reference anchors to BLS OEWS metro data with a 191-index cost-of-labor adjustment. Source-to-recommendation lineage is retained in the Task 4 platform (4I) for audit.
The local-market reference and locality index are real (BLS OEWS 2025, SOC 29-1141). Comparator employer wages and the recommended grade schedule are illustrative — at engagement they are collected directly from each facility's local labor market under the §7451 survey and built from VA's Title 38 nurse grade structure.