Consultants ‘to work weekends’ as 7-day NHS moves nearer

A Seven-day NHS has come closer as consultants are set to lose their right to refuse to work at weekends.

In a major breakthrough in contract negotiations, union leaders are believed to have agreed to scrap the clause allowing senior hospital doctors to opt out of shifts on Saturdays and Sundays.

The deal removes a key obstacle to the Government’s plans for an NHS with supermarket- style opening hours that give patients the same high level of service every day of the week.

It comes as junior doctors decide whether to accept a draft contract designed to end their bitter dispute over weekend pay.

Consultants’ contracts are also being renegotiated, after a lucrative one introduced by Labour in 2003 gave them the right to refuse weekend shifts while increasing average pay by almost a third.

Labour said the changes were designed to stop highly trained medics leaving the National Health Service but the Public Health Committee later described the deal as a ‘nonsense’. It said consultants were being paid overtime rates of up to £200 an hour to fill in the gaps – and that 5 per cent of the NHS’s overall budget was going on their pay.

There is also growing concern that patient safety is being compromised by senior doctors only expected to be on call, merely popping into hospitals at weekends, leaving patients in the care of lessexperienced staff.

The research is disputed but studies show patients admitted to hospital at the weekend are up to 16 per cent more likely to die than those taken in during the week.

And the NHS’s medical director, Sir Bruce Keogh, has calculated that 11,000 deaths a year are down to the so-called ‘weekend effect’ – although he did point out that his study could not conclude how many of those deaths could have been prevented.

Correspondence from Ann MacIntyre, one of the NHS employers’ negotiators involved with the British Medical Association, suggests the right to opt out of non-essential evening and week-

‘Safe care every day of the week’

end work will be removed from the new contract.

The deal will also simplify the pay structure for the nation’s 41,000 consultants, with a starting salary of about £75,000, rising to £95,000. Bonuses, known as clinical excellence awards which can see consultants earning up to £76,000 on top of their salary, will be scrapped and replaced with a new performance pay scheme, The Sunday Times has reported.

A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘We want to introduce a fairer contract for consultants that better reflects their role as leaders in our NHS and helps to ensure patients get safe, high-quality care every day of the week. Talks with the BMA have been constructive but they have not concluded.’ A spokesman for the BMA said: ‘Talks on the consultant contract are ongoing and will be for several months. No final agree- ment has yet been reached and no final contract has been agreed.’

Last week it appeared the junior doctors’ long-running dispute over their new contract had been resolved. On Wednesday, the BMA signed a provisional contract which, on paper, seems far worse for junior doctors – all medics below the level of consultant – than the terms they first demanded.

But following five months of crippling strikes, the union apparently agreed to the deal for fear of losing public support if they continued with industrial action. However, there are fears the deal will be rejected by members in a referendum to be held next month.