Top doctors earning over $500,000

A handful of top doctors now earn half-million-dollar salaries, despite a tough year for the health sector.

However, unions representing health workers say pay needs to increase across the board – not just at the top.

Annual reports for the 21 district health boards show seven clinicians working in the public health system now earn more than $500,000 a year, including two at Wellington Hospital and one at Hutt Hospital. About 60 others earn more than $350,000.

The figures are total remuneration packages and include work cars, overtime and other extras.

A surgeon working for Whanganui District Health Board has the highest salary at a public hospital, earning more than $600,000.

The top doctor's remuneration at Wellington Hospital in the 2008-09 financial year was nearly $560,000 – a $180,000 jump from the previous year, despite Capital and Coast District Health Board's $66 million deficit.

The two Wellington Hospital surgeons have overtaken Capital and Coast chief executive Ken Whelan as the organisation's top-earning staff members.

The Dominion Post understands they work fulltime for the hospital and do not supplement their pay by working part-time privately.

The high salaries of the board's most senior doctors often reflected the long hours they worked, Mr Whelan said.

"The two clinicians earning more than $500,000 are in fields where their expertise requires them to be on-call for large parts of the year.

"When you look at remuneration, you also have to consider productivity, and in the 2008-09 year we performed 13 per cent more surgeries than in the previous year, meaning around 1600 additional people got surgery."

Board chairman Sir John Anderson was satisfied the top salaries paid were appropriate. "I think it would be a mistake if we looked at every aspect of our performance through the lens of financial performance.

"Living within our means is certainly a key priority, but ... there is a balance which must be struck between financial performance and service performance."

Ian Powell, director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists – the senior doctors' union – said salaries for all senior doctors needed to increase. "Those salaries you're referring to wouldn't stand out so much if the base salary for all specialties was higher."

In Australia, salaries of between $250,000 and $400,000 were common.

Service and Food Workers Union national secretary John Ryall said increases at the top of the pay scale were indefensible when hospital service workers were facing a wage freeze. Hospital orderlies, security guards, cleaners and kitchen workers picketed hospitals last year about health boards' offer of a 0 per cent pay increase.

"Our members get pretty annoyed when they see on one hand they're being told there's no money and on the other hand people on the top ends of the salary band getting wage increases."

- © Fairfax NZ News