Unions condemn hospital trust's £250,000 outlay on interim chief
Health workers' unions expressed anger today after it emerged that a temporary chief executive had cost a struggling hospital trust more than £2,500 a day, plus almost £20,000 in expenses.
Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust accepted that the money they spent on Derek Smith and other interim executives would cause controversy but insisted they had been worth the money.
The trust paid the health services management company of which Smith is part just under £250,000 for his 97 days' work. It also paid £19,539 in expenses to cover Smith's travel to and accommodation in Dorchester.
Set out in the trust's annual report and accounts, the figures show that the equivalent of between £663 and £1,230 a day was paid out for three other senior temporary directors.
Unison spokeswoman Tanya Palmer called the figures "absolutely outrageous", adding: "That is money that could go towards efficiency savings or [be] loaded into frontline services.
"Most nurses will be earning about £1,800 a month after tax, and to see someone earning hundreds of pounds more than that in a single day will be galling.
"A man who runs a county hospital gets far more than the prime minister gets for running a whole country. How does that work?
"It is a disgusting amount of money and I can't see how anyone can justify this exorbitant waste of taxpayer's money."
The row has echoes of last month's controversy over a pay package of almost £250,000 received by a south-east London primary school head, Mark Elms.
Dr Peter Carter, chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said: "It is frankly unbelievable that these shockingly high sums of money continue to be spent at the same time that nurses and other staff are seeing frontline services cut and being asked to accept a pay freeze."
"This wasteful spending should be eradicated and resources must be directed to the frontline where they directly help patient care."
In Smith's case, the money was paid to a consultancy, Durrow Ltd, specialists in health service management. Its clients include not only many British healthcare trusts and the Department of Health but also overseas organisations ranging from the government of Bolivia to the government of South Australia.
Smith has worked at King's College hospital and Imperial College hospital in London and for London Underground. Durrow's website heralds him as a "key player … at the heart of Durrow's work."
His biography on the website claims he has an "unparalleled record in the NHS with over 20 years' experience as an acute hospital CEO."
drive from www.guardian.co.uk