Health directors paid £500,000 (From Western Telegraph)

Health directors paid £500,000

The 13 directors in charge of health services in Pembrokeshire have a combined pay packet of nearly £500,000.

Chief executive Stuart Gray tops the Dyfed Powys Health Authority salary league with a basic salary of £112,000. An extra £6,000 is awarded in pension, benefits and bonus payments.

Chairman Margret Price receives £21,000 while the other non-executive directors get up to £10,000 a year.

The salaries of the executive directors, including the director of public health and the director of finance, start at £40,000, rising to £85,000.

All 13 board members meet six times a year at locations across Mid and West Wales, including Haverfordwest and Carmarthen.

The authority this week published its annual report for 1999/2000 which reveals that it had been forced to cut its budgets by £11 million to avoid a predicted deficit of £25 million by 2004.

This deficit was triggered by pay settlements, creditor bills which had to be settled when fundholding ended and financial imbalances in the local NHS Trusts.

Despite these savings, the Authority had to borrow £11.2 million from the National Assembly of Wales to maintain essential services and cashflow. It was able to keep within its £394.1 million budget but admits this success masked significant difficulties. There was an unplanned £1.6 million increase in inpatient care costs because of escalating demand for complex psychiatric placements and care in the community.

Increases in emergency and urgent hospital admissions also created excess costs of £700,000.

Chairman Margret Price admits it had been a challenging year.

Two major changes had been the establishment of Local Health Groups and the creation of new NHS Trusts.