NHS bosses are earning annual bonuses of tens of thousands of pounds on top of their six figure salaries as Anna Walker, chief executive of the Healthcare Commission, got £68,000 in bonuses.

Hundreds of chief executives, departmental directors and board members of hospitals and other NHS organisations have received extra payments of as much as £32,000 – the largest single year’s bonus unearthed by freedom of information requests submitted by the Liberal Democrats.

The £32,000 bonus went in 2008-09 to Beccy Fenton, deputy chief executive of the Heart of England hospital trust, who already earns £170,000 a year. She received it after generating almost £1m of consultancy work for her employers, including private sector contracts. The trust stressed last night that the £32,000 was a one-off sum for consultancy work.

Anna Walker, who was chief executive of the Healthcare Commission until it was disbanded last year, earned the largest combined amount in the past three years – £68,150 on top of her six-figure salary. She received £22,375 in 2006-07, £23,000 in 2007-08 and £22,775 in 2008-09 for running the then NHS watchdog in England.

Norman Lamb, the Lib Dems’ health spokesman, condemned the payments as shocking. “These bonuses are utterly scandalous. People will be disgusted by the extent to which fat cats in the public sector have been enriched at a time when the NHS has denied people drugs that they need and access to treatments such as in mental health,” he said. “We thought it was just in banking, but the unacceptable bonus culture appears to be alive and kicking in the upper echelons of the NHS.”

This is the first time both the number of bonuses and their size has been disclosed. The Lib Dems sought information from every hospital trust, primary care trust (PCT), mental health trust and ambulance service in England, as well as other NHS bodies such as strategic health authorities.

While some pay no bonuses, many do. However, the figures do not reveal the full picture because some refused to disclose theirs and a few simply gave their chief executive’s salary band.

The £32,000 one-off bonus and the £68,150 over three years are large but not atypical.

Laura Roberts, chief executive of the Manchester PCT, received £25,732 extra in 2008-09, while Dr Patrick Geoghegan, her counterpart at South Essex Partnership mental health trust – who earns £170,000-180,000 – received £20,573 in the same year for helping it do well against NHS targets.

South Essex trust spokeswoman Maxine Forrest, said: “In 2008-09, to recognise the trust’s exceptional performance in national ratings, a one-off bonus was paid. Dr Patrick Geoghegan is chief executive of one of the most successful and highest-performing NHS organisations in the country.”

Paul O’Connor, a former chief executive of Birmingham Children’s Hospital, received a one-off £15,000 bonus in 2007 for helping it to achieve semi-independent foundation trust status within the NHS. He resigned late in 2008 after the Observer revealed doctors’ concerns that some care was sub-standard.

The chief executive of the Royal Berkshire hospital trust received £54,611 in bonuses over three years in 2007-09, while the chief executive of the Human Tissue Authority was given £37,895 in 2006-09.

Many chairmen, divisional directors and both executive and non-executive directors of NHS bodies also receive bonuses. The Royal Berkshire hospital trust spent £240,728 on bonuses in 2007-09, more than any other NHS body that provided figures. Eight executive directors shared another £186,117, as well as the £54,611 payment to the chief executive.

Large payments to senior figures in those three years were also made by the Healthcare Commission (£215,550), the London Ambulance Service (£130,646), the Hertfordshire Partnership mental health trust (£122,465) and Portsmouth Hospitals (£105,000).

All three main parties have pledged to slash NHS management and bureaucracy. “This is the first real analysis of the bonus culture at the top of the NHS, and it’s shocking,” said Lamb. “Bonuses of £20,000 or more are more than many NHS staff receive as their full year’s salary.”

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/apr/25/nhs-bonus-liberal-democrats

Tens of thousands of NHS workers would be sacked, hospital units closed and patients denied treatments under labour’s secret plans for £20 billion of health cuts.

The sick would be urged to stay at home and email doctors rather than visit surgeries, while procedures such as hip replacements could be scrapped.

The plans have emerged as health chiefs draw up emergency budgets that cast doubt on pledges by Gordon Brown to protect “front line services” in the NHS.

Documents show that health chiefs are considering plans to begin sacking workers, cutting treatments and shutting wards across the country.

The proposals could lead to:
* 10 per cent of NHS staff being sacked in some areas.
* The loss of thousands of hospital beds.
* A reduction in the number of ambulance call-outs.
* Medical professionals being replaced by less qualified assistants.

The plans are contained in a series of internal NHS documents uncovered by The Daily Telegraph.

The final details of the plans are not due to be announced until the autumn, well after the country has gone to the polls for the general election.

The Conservatives and health campaigners said the public deserved to know the true extent of cuts at their local surgeries and hospitals before voting.

Last year all English health authorities were ordered by Sir David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive, to reconsider their plans after the recession forced the Government to freeze health spending from April next year.

This left a ”black hole’’ of up to £20 billion in health budgets up to 2014, prompting the drawing up of new proposals by the 10 strategic health authorities (SHAs).

They had until Friday to submit their plans to Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary. He is under pressure from the Treasury to show how money will be saved to help bring down Britain’s record £167 billion deficit.

In Wednesday’s Budget, Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, repeated that the £20 billion would come through “efficiency savings” and not key services.

Documents produced by several of the SHAs show how the cuts are, in fact, expected to fall on hospital services.

In the South East Coast region, which covers Surrey, Kent and Sussex, up to £1.6 billion must be saved.

A document marked “restricted” and circulated among SHA board members suggests 10,000 of the region’s 100,000 NHS workers may lose their jobs. “The new financial environment demands that the trend in workforce growth must be reversed,” it said, adding bosses must reduce employee numbers by 10 per cent “or further”.

The document said staffing in the acute sector, covering hospitals, “can be expected to decline faster and further” than elsewhere.

Job losses will be “starting in the coming year”, it states. Mr Brown has repeatedly promised Labour will not start making significant cuts to public spending until 2011. A spokesman for the South East Coast SHA said the document was a discussion paper and not a final plan.

In London, which faces £5 billion in cuts, documents show managers believe up to £2 billion can be saved from community care budgets, which cover GPs’ surgeries. This would include “changing how patients get in contact with and receive services, such as through greater use of the internet and email”.

An internal presentation by NHS Yorkshire and the Humber, which spans Sheffield, York, Hull and north Lincolnshire, made similar suggestions. The SHA, which is expected to make about £2 billion in cuts, proposed directing more patients to “teleservices such as NHS Direct”. Meanwhile, £450 million could be saved in London by banning clinical procedures “that have little or no benefit to those receiving them, for example some joint replacements”.

NHS North West, which oversees Greater Manchester and Liverpool, is expected to make about £2 billion savings. It is preparing to close an A&E unit in Rochdale during evenings before scrapping it altogether next year.

In the East region, covering Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, up to £2 billion is to be cut. The SHA proposes shifting services out of hospitals and making social workers take over some treatments. It is estimated that savings of about £2.4 billion will need to be made by NHS West Midlands, £2 billion in the South West, £1.3 billion in South Central, £1 billion in the North East and £800 million in the East Midlands.

All the Department of Health spokesman could say- as a way of confirmation: “We will be clear with trusts that they must not make short term cuts that harm patient care.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7529454/Hospital-wards-to-shut-in-secret-NHS-cuts.html