Agency staff ‘ripping off hospitals’

NHS boss Simon Stevens has vowed to curb the number of expensive agency staff ‘ripping off’ Britain’s hospitals.

He pledged to act ‘immediately’ to tackle the culture of temporary jobs that in some cases have seen companies paid up to £1,800 for supplying a nurse for a single shift.

Acknowledging the increasing toll of the ‘big extra spending’ required to hire casual staff, including doctors, he said: ‘We have to do some things immediately to make sure we get maximum bang for the buck which the taxpayer is providing... we’ve got to tackle that.’

The latest figures from health regulator Monitor show the NHS spent £1.8billion on temporary employees last year. As well as plunging health trusts’ finances into the red, the over-reliance on agency staff has seen demoralised nurses quit their jobs to earn more in the same role as agency work- ers. Speaking on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show yesterday, Mr Stevens said: ‘What we’ve got to do is convert that spending into good, paying permanent jobs. One of the things we’ve got to do is ensure that NHS hospitals are offering flexible employment for these nurses who are currently working in these temporary agencies, but also we will have to clamp down on some of these staffing agencies who frankly are ripping off the NHS.’

Mr Stevens, who has urged the government to spend an extra £8billion a year on health, said it was ‘very difficult’ for individual hospital trusts to curb agency staff but ‘collectively the NHS can take action’. He said staff shortages were driven by the report into the Mid Staffs hospital scandal, which recommended more nurses per patient.

‘Obviously it takes three years to train a nurse so if you do this very quickly, you need to rely on temporary staffing,’ he added.