The taxpayer is paying at least £300,000 a year for a health board's three chief executives - one seconded, one suspended and one standing in for the other two.
Under questioning by MSPs yesterday, Dr Kevin Woods, chief executive of NHS Scotland, described the situation at NHS Western Isles as "undesirable and unusual".
Scotland's most senior health service official was giving evidence before Holyrood's audit committee which is investigating the board's debt of £3.64m. It follows years of turmoil within NHS Western Isles, punctuated by allegations of financial mismanagement, bullying and harassment.
In 2006, a management task force was sent to take control. The move resulted in the departure of the then chairman David Currie, chief executive Dick Manson and the medical director Dr John Smith.
The appointment in January last year of Laurence Irvine as chief executive of NHS Western Isles, was supposed to herald a new dawn for the health board's fortunes. But he was suspended in September on full pay of around £100,000 a year. It is understood this followed a freedom of information request from within the board for the CV presented by Mr Irvine with his application.
He was replaced by John Turner, former chief executive of Borders Primary Care Trust.
Dr Woods told the committee that Mr Manson had sought a secondment in 2006 and was Director of National Development Projects.
Mr Manson was still paid by the health board, but NHS Scotland reimbursed it for his salary. Mr Irvine was paid by the board while Mr Turner was paid directly by NHS Scotland.
Dr Woods said that Mr Turner and the health board's new chairman John Angus Mackay appeared to have got things under control and expected to balance their budget or report a small surplus in the financial year just about to end.
Dr Woods, who is due to visit the board in Stornoway next month, said Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon was aware of the position. "I am concerned. The issue is what are the options available to me. I have to operate within the framework of employment law."
Mr Manson had not been subject to any disciplinary action by NHS Western Isles when he had sought secondment. "There will have to be discussions between the board, Mr Manson and ourselves about his future," he said.
SNP's Willie Coffey told Dr Woods: "When Mr Manson and Mr Currie took up their posts, the Western Isles was actually in surplus, but when they left there was a deficit approaching £3.5m. For the chief executive to then be moved sideways, promoted or otherwise is going to seem incredible."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article