NHS Tayside’s director of public health, Dr Drew Walker, was the organisation’s highest paid executive last year.
Dr Walker was paid between £190,000 and £195,000 in the year to the end of March.
It is the second year in succession that Dr Walker has topped the executive earnings list.
His annual salary and other payments rose by £10,000 in each of the last two years.
However, the public health director comes nowhere close to the organisation’s highest paid executive ever, Dr William Mutch, who was paid in excess of £240,000 in the year to the end of March 2009. The former medical director retired in the spring of that year.
Total pay costs jumped by nearly £11 million to £445,627,000 last year.
The annual accounts for the year to the end of March have just been laid before the Scottish Parliament and can now be made public. They show that the health authority balanced the books for the 10th year in succession and met all its financial targets.
Pay is one of the biggest draws on NHS Tayside’s near £1 billion annual budget.
Over 900 employees of NHS Tayside earned in excess of £50,000 last year, 812 of them were clinicians and 101 employed in other higher-paid posts.
That compares to 828 employees earning in excess of £50,000 the previous year, 732 clinicians and 96 employed in other posts.
The number of clinicians earning over £150,000 rose from 46 in the year to the end of March 2010 to 51 last year.
The very highest paid number of clinicians fell last year with none earning in excess of £190,000.
The previous year two clinicians earned between £190,000 and £200,000 while another earned in excess of £200,000.
Only the salaries and payments to senior executives who are members of the board of NHS Tayside are set down against named individuals in bands of £5,000.
Only the number and not the names of other higher paid employees are given against earnings grouped in totals that rise by bands of £10,000.
As an executive of the board, Dr Walker leads the earnings there. The next highest earning executive is Professor Tony Wells, the former chief executive of NHS Tayside, who retired earlier this year. Professor Wells was paid between £170,000 and £175,000 last year.
That was exactly the same payment level made to him the previous year.
Dr Andrew Russell, the health authority’s medical director, was paid between £160,000 and £165,000 last year.
The man who took over from Professor Wells earlier this year was the fourth highest paid executive last year. Gerry Marr took over as chief executive on February 1 and was chief operating officer up until that date.
The accounts showed his earnings for last year were between £150,000 and £155,000. Those earnings were up on the previous year, when the accounts record he was paid between £145,000 and £150,000.
Finance director Ian McDonald said the health board spent £891 million in the year to the end of March, more than half of that spent on paying staff.
Mr McDonald said the health authority would be expected to live within its means, as it had done for the last 10 years.