Fresh pressure over hospital chief sacking
ORMSKIRK Hospital bosses are facing mounting pressure to reveal the reasons behind the sacking of chief executive Jonathan Parry.
Mr Parry was dismissed from his £150,000-a-year post last Tuesday (October 25), after a disciplinary hearing found evidence on 11 offences of misconduct, seven of which amounted to gross misconduct.
Mr Parry, one of the UK’s longest- serving chief executives, was dismissed without severance pay.
He was initially suspended on full pay in August last year and has been on gardening leave for the past 14 months while place.
But, despite repeated requests from the media, Southport and Ormskirk NHS Hospitals Trust has consistently refused to reveal any details about the incidents of misconduct for which he was dismissed.
The trust serves 258,000 people in Southport, Formby and West Lancashire, and Mr Parry headed an organisation that employed almost 3,500 staff.
Southport Lib Dem MP John Pugh is calling for the trust to come clean.
He said: “Gross misconduct could be almost anything investigations took from setting fire to operating theatres, to financial irregularities, to mishandling complaints from members of staff.
“The trust needs to let the public know what has led them to use up such a huge amount of hospital resources to investigate this for over a year.”
Mr Parry was initially suspended along with three senior colleagues. Chief operating officer Sheilah Finnegan, who earned £100,000 a year; human resources director Sharon Partington, who was paid £90,000; and deputy performance director Richard McCarthy, who took home between £65,000 and £81,000, were also excluded on full pay.
The total wage bill while they were suspended exceeded £400,000.
Mr Pugh said: “This implicated a whole range of people and potentially has repercussions for how the hospital is run in the future. We need to know what happened.”
Ms Partington resigned in September and Ms Finnegan retired in July before either faced a disciplinary panel.
In September, Mr McCarthy was cleared of any wrongdoing and was allowed to return to work.
Mr Pugh said: “I’m bemused as to why the whole process has taken so long at such enormous cost. Not only was the chief executive’s salary paid for a whole year for no work, vast amounts of money were also paid to various bodies to investigate this.”
Trust chair Sue Musson said: “Jonathan Parry has the right to appeal against his dismissal and has ind-icated in comment to the media that he will do so.
“It would be inappropriate and unfair to him for the trust to comment on his case before the appeal process is complete.”