A HOSPITAL boss who received full pay while on “special leave” from his £90,000-a-year post with NHS Highland has quit to run his own medical company.
Chris Lyons plans to tap into the lucrative “medical tourism” market by bringing US patients to Britain and Ireland for private surgery.
His new firm claims it can save patients up to 80% of the cost of common procedures.
Mr Lyons, who was director of operations at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, went on so-called special leave from about September last year.
At the time, the 452-bed hospital was facing an £8.6million overspend and managers were under pressure to find a solution to their budget problems.
The hospital is still struggling to balance its books, with a £9.2million overspend predicted by the end of March.
NHS Highland did not reveal why Mr Lyons was off work but stressed he had not been suspended. It has now emerged that he left the health board in December and launched his business soon after.
Mr Lyons, who lives in Nairn, said he did not want to comment on his departure from NHS Highland or on his new venture.
He did confirm that he had worked for NHS Highland from August 2010 to December 2013 and that he had set up GetMedicalTreatmentAbroad.
The health board answered only four out of 12 questions the Press and Journal asked about Mr Lyons and his departure from his post. A spokeswoman said: “Mr Lyons no longer works for NHS Highland. We will be advertising the post in due course.
“Interim management arrangements are in place. We have no further comment to make on this matter.”
When his “special leave” was made public, a board insider said there had been difficulties at Raigmore over the preceding couple of years with targets for financial performance and waiting times.
He claimed: “The board has been very concerned about performance at Raigmore for a number of years, but this does not relate to patient care or staff professionalism. It is more about financial performance and efficiency.”
He added that the board believed more could be done to redesign services at the hospital to become “more efficient and effective”.
Conservative Highlands and Islands MSP Mary Scanlon said yesterday: “It is always worrying when you lose a manager of this calibre and a manager who was committed to healthcare.
“I am unaware of the circumstances so we just have to trust that NHS Highland brings in someone who can not only help to manage the budget but ensure that patients receive the same level of access to care and treatment as elsewhere in Scotland.”
She added that the predicted overspend at Raigmore was still a worry and called for more understanding of the challenges of providing care in remote and rural locations.
Last night Margaret Watt, of Scotland Patients Association, said the public was “owed an explanation” about Mr Lyons’s departure. She said: “Why was he off all that time? It is the patients that employed him. Something is not right here.
“There should be an inquiry into what has happened to find out why he was off.”
GetMedicalTreatmentAbroad’s website says Mr Lyons is the lead associate with the agency.
His predecessor at Raigmore, Susan Eddie, left the hospital in November 2009 “for personal reasons”.
In December 2009, Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon declined to comment on reports suggesting Ms Eddie had quit her £80,000-a-year job in frustration at service cuts aimed at balancing that year’s £573million NHS Highland budget.