NHS ‘paying up to £2,500 per shift’

DESPERATION in the NHS due to a lack of doctors and nurses is forcing health bosses to pay extraordinary rates for agency staff, analysis shows.

Figures from the BBC reveal spending on agency workers rose 20 per cent last year to hit £3billion in England. It said bosses have been so short staffed they have been willing to breach government pay caps.

Separate data supplied by Labour shows some trusts have paid nurses £2,500 to fill shifts, with almost 47,000 nursing vacancies currently in the NHS. Dr Sarah Clarke, president of the Royal College of Physicians, told BBC Breakfast: ‘Staff shortages have meant we’ve had to dip into the public spending and pay for agency and locum staff and this comes at a significant cost.’

Cardiologist Dr Clarke said some staff want to work as locums as it pays more, gives more flexibility and ‘takes them away from some of the terms and conditions that are unpopular’. One fix would be to employ more doctors, she said, adding that doubling the number of medical students to 15,000 would cost £1.8billion per year. She said the Government needs to produce a plan on how to staff the NHS long term.

Agency pay is capped at 55 per cent above normal rates. But for nearly nine in 10 agency shifts for doctors and four in 10 for nurses, the caps were exceeded last year.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said there is ‘a clear policy to reduce agency spend’, adding: ‘We have also commissioned a workforce plan to help recruit and support NHS staff.’