Source: Daily Mail
The NHS is paying spin doctors more than the experts in charge of cancer screening and patient care, it emerged yesterday.
Critics said it was an example of the waste and skewed priorities rife in the Health Service at a time when it is supposed to be making efficiency savings.
In the past four years, primary care trusts and strategic health authorities across England have spent £182million on their communications departments, employing 491 full-time ‘media professionals’.
Even in 2010-11, when health bosses were complaining about the threat of cuts to front-line services, they found £44.3million to lavish on spin and public relations. In the last full year in which Labour held power, the bill was £50million.
The most serious example of misplaced priorities was at Yorkshire and the Humber Strategic Health Authority. Karl Milner, the director of communications and public relations, was paid £128,600 in 2009-10. Yet the organisation’s national cancer screening director was paid £106,000, while the director of patient care earned £127,200.
Read more: Health Service pays spin doctors more than cancer experts
Cartoon by Bob Moran
