Put NHS bosses’ pay on the line

I DON’T believe I am alone in being outraged at news that health trusts are still paying eye-watering amounts of money to senior managers.

Latest figures show that some temporary managers brought in to try to save failing clinical commissioning groups are on rates equal to £200,000 a year — and some are on more than £300,000. What on earth is going on?

Despite government ministers saying they will clamp down on this kind of largesse, the NHS claims it needs to pay these kinds of wages to be competitive and attract the best candidates.

Rubbish. Most of these managers that I have encountered are mediocre at best.

And the fact that out of 32 failing clinical commissioning groups that hired them, just three are no longer deemed to be failing, suggests they aren’t worth the money.

I don’t agree with the NHS being run like a business, but this is the way it seems to be going. It therefore seems to make sense to me that — just as happens in the corporate sector — the pay for these managers should be linked to performance.

I guarantee that as soon as managers’ salaries are dependent on the care that’s being delivered, we’ll suddenly start to see a lot more of them at the coalface and things will suddenly start to improve.