THERE was national outcry following the Echo’s revelation that the interim chief executive bought in to sort out crisis-hit Dorset County Hospital cost £2,557 a day - more than a nurse earns in a month.

Every national newspaper followed up the Echo report which revealed that Derek Smith earned £248,041 for just 97 days work.

Unions and healthcare workers lined up to condemn the cost of employing interim management at a time when the hospital was suffering a serious cash crisis and frontline workers feared for their future.

Public Service union Unison is now calling for Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation trust chairman Jeffrey Ellwood to step down, after he defended the pay outs and said that the amount spent on interim directors was just £315,000 more than would have been paid to permanent executives had they been in place.

Mr Smith, who lives in a £1.5million home in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, has refused to comment on the furore created by the money spent by the cash-strapped hospital employing him.

Ian Ducat, regional secretary for Unison in the South West, said the union is looking at how they can generate an investigation into the payments and called for the trust chief executive to ‘reconsider his position.’ He said staff at DCH have been ‘scandalised’ on hearing the figures.

He said: “There’s a number of things that really don’t add up on this.

“Why did the original Chief Executive leave so suddenly and if the financial position of the trust was so healthy when the risk position was one out of five why did they need a turnaround manager?”

The annual report for the hospital’s council of governors showed consultants Ernst and Young were paid £349,608 and Price Waterhouse Coopers were paid £420,571 to help turn around the hospital’s finances.

Mr Ducat said: “It does seem to me that there’s more than meets the eye here.

“But obviously this is a big business and a lot of skill is required to lead an organisation like this.

“I don’t say we should be paying the leader of an organisation like this peanuts, but it is scandalous the way they have paid such vast sums of money to do it in this way. Especially if we are paying £2,500 a day and half of that to an agency.”

Mr Ducat said Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation trust chairman Jeffrey Ellwood caused anger saying that the amount spent was £315,000 more than permanent executives would have been paid. Mr Ducat said: “A lot of people are earning a tenth of that or less.

“That would fund 10 nurses for a year.

“There are nurses and a lot of people earning less than £30,000 and nurse auxiliaries on £17,000 to £18,000 a year.”