NHS spends millions – to learn how to save cash!

HEALTH bosses have spent up to £21million on management consultants – to tell them how to cut costs.

The Government was criticised for the ‘ludicrous waste’ of public money, with doctors and nurses saying the spending was difficult to justify in the wake of NHS staff shortages and pay freezes.

The Kent and Medway area alone paid £3.2 million to four firms.

Dr John Allingham, who works as a GP in Dover, said it was ‘an eye-watering amount of money’. He added: ‘It is difficult to justify how we can find cash for cake when so many people have no bread.’

The figures were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by GP magazine Pulse. It asked the NHS’s 44 Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP) regions in England what they had spent on external consultants since March 2016. The 19 STPs which responded spent £9.17m. Pulse extrapolated the figures across all 44 and said the total spend could be up to £21.2m.

BMA chairman Dr Chaand Nagpaul said: ‘It is unacceptable millions of pounds are spent on consultancy fees for so-called “transformation plans” that are ultimately designed as a cover to deliver £26 bn in cuts. This is a ludicrous waste of taxpayers’ money.’

An NHS England spokesman said: ‘Pulse Magazine have simply made up their headline of £21m. Even they admit the actual number reported is less than half of this.’