By Gillian Ellison

Last updated at 12:01, Thursday, 05 July 2012

The man running north Cumbria’s hospitals has been named as the second most expensive interim executive in the NHS – earning a DAILY rate of £1,750.

Dr Neil Goodwin

The Health Service Journal has just published a list of the top 10 most expensive interim executives nationally.

It names Neil Goodwin, interim chief executive of the North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust – which runs the Carlisle and Whitehaven hospitals – as second highest.

Above him is Mark Davies, on a daily rate of £2,000, who was the interim chief executive of Imperial College Healthcare, London.

Last year it emerged that Dr Goodwin, who took up the post last June, was paid £129,000 for his first five months.

He is scheduled to leave this September when the trust is taken over by new bosses from Northumbria Healthcare as a result of long-running financial problems.

Dr Goodwin was brought in to sort out the finances, increase efficiency and support the trust through the takeover process.

He told the Health Service Journal this was the first and only interim management role he had arranged through his consultancy company GoodwinHannah.

The North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust did not wish to comment further.

Kevin Young, regional organiser for the GMB union, said this week: “Dr Goodwin gets paid in one day what most of my members earn in a month. Dr Goodwin’s salary is absolutely disgusting in a time when most of my members have been subject to austerity measures to control the financial crisis that was not of their making. Their chief executive is basically rubbing their noses into the dirt.”

First published at 11:24, Thursday, 05 July 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk