Health officials ‘ignoring’ breaches of hospital chief executive salary caps

The Department of Health is “ignoring” situations where voluntary hospital chief executives are being paid salaries in excess of set scales for the sector due to difficulties finding suitable candidates for the roles, correspondence claims.

The Voluntary Healthcare Forum, which represents 18 voluntary hospitals, said the department and the HSE were “aware” of a number of cases where salary caps were being breached.

In correspondence to Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, the group of predominantly State-funded voluntary hospitals said current chief executive pay scales were causing “significant difficulties” when recruiting qualified staff.

The July 31st letter, seen by The Irish Times, said existing salary levels for the sector had led to some chief executive positions remaining “unfilled for well over 12 months”.

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In several cases, it said, hospital boards had decided to appoint chief executives “on a higher scale than the scale specified for the organisation”. This was necessary to attract “appropriately qualified and appropriately experienced applicants” for the top positions, the correspondence said.

The submission from the group said the department and the HSE “seem to be simply ignoring these situations”. It said voluntary hospitals, which make up a significant portion of the country’s acute hospitals, were losing senior staff to the HSE and the private sector.

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The pay scales, introduced in 2015, cap chief executive pay at about €150,000 for large voluntary hospitals such as Beaumont Hospital and the Mater hospital, with several bands of lower pay scales for smaller hospitals.

The letter from Liam Dowdall, chair of the Voluntary Healthcare Forum, said voluntary hospital boards were “continually encountering difficulties in attracting high-calibre applicants” due to salary limits.

In seven cases, hospitals had interim rather than permanent chief executives, he wrote. Prospective internal candidates were not willing to take on the significant levels of responsibility that came with the position of chief executive for “extraordinarily little extra pay”, he said.

The letter outlined one case where an internal candidate would have only seen a €150 pay increase if they became chief executive, while another would have to take a €9,000 pay cut. “No system should create internal disincentives to recruitment, which these pay scales do,” it said.

Business cases had been made to the HSE for extra funding to retain chief executives, which Mr Dowdall said were usually ignored. “Occasionally, there have been rejection responses after many months and in some cases over a year later,” he wrote.

The forum said hospitals were facing dilemmas when trying to recruit a new chief executive “on a lower scale” than their departing predecessor.

Some hospitals felt they had “no choice other than to stick strictly to the approved scales”, the representative group said. Others took the view that they “had no rational choice other than to appoint new CEOs on the same scale as their predecessors”.

A department spokesman said while HSE officials had received requests for increases in pay for chief executive positions, “sanction was not given for any deviation away from existing approved rates”.

“The HSE has advised that where an organisation has appointed their CEO at a higher rate than is sanctioned, they have been advised that they are in breach of pay policy,” he said.

The letter from Mr Dowdall, which was also sent to Robert Watt, department secretary general, and Bernard Gloster, HSE chief executive, was released to The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act.

Mo Flynn, chief executive of the representative group, said it was hoped that upcoming public sector pay talks might “resolve” the current “inequitable” situation facing voluntary hospitals.