Fury of £20 million agency bill for health service workers.

Oct 28 2011 by Lisa Boyle, Ayrshire Post (main ed)

SKINT health chiefs have spent almost £20 million employing agency staff in just four years.

The huge sum has been dished out to pay for temporary professionals in hospitals, offices and laboratories across the Ayrshire health service.

Furious union bosses and politicians have hit out at the revelation.

And it will leave a bitter taste in the mouths of highly qualified NHS professionals who are considered ‘bank staff’, meaning they are only offered shifts as and when required.

Medical locums take up the vast majority of the agency cost, and they have set the health board back £13.7 million since 2007.

The bill for agency staff in administrative jobs totalled £3.2 million and pharmacy allied health professionals and technical staff cost £1.5 million over the same period.

The lowest agency spend is on nurses and that bill to NHS Ayrshire and Arran is £744,981.

Health chiefs were unable to reveal what the longest period of continuous time an agency professional has been hired, how much they were paid, when they were hired or what their role was.

They claim that they do not record that information.

The news was released to the Post through the Freedom of Information Act.

And it comes hot on the heels of the health board’s plan to close the orthopaedic trauma unit at Ayr Hospital.

That plan has now been scrapped but health chiefs claimed it was needed to make savings.

However, they admitted it would only save an estimated £500,000 from next year’s budget – a fraction of the agency staff bill.

Ewing Hope, organiser of health workers trade union UNISON in Ayrshire, said: “This is effectively part privatisation within the health service.

“Given the difficult times we are in, we would much prefer that some of the huge bank of staff be made permanent.

“It would be much cheaper to make some of these people permanent than employ agency staff.

“A premium is paid to the agency and the workers are paid more so the cost is considerably higher.”

And Mr Hope said health chiefs have given the union plenty of empty promises.

He explained: “Whenever we go to the health board about it we are always given guarantees that the number of agency staff will be reduced, but we just don’t see that happening. It’s a constant battle for us.

“For an organisation trying to make efficiency savings, they’re not going about it the right way.”

Adam Ingram MSP said he is deeply concerned and has demanded changes.

He said: “NHS Ayrshire and Arran is seeking to make changes to the provision of certain services under the pretext of efficiency savings, yet they are spending millions on employing staff from agencies rather than recruiting their own staff at a fraction of the cost.

“To that end, I urge the management to review both their planning process and recruitment policy so that the use of agency staff is kept to a minimum. Expenditure of this level on agency staff is unsustainable and must not be allowed to put vital frontline services at risk.”

Ayr MSP John Scott said the figures were ‘quite remarkable’.

And he added: “There will clearly always be a need for agency staff to be available when, for example, unforeseen staff shortages arise but these figures would suggest a far more widespread use at what is obviously a very considerable cost.

“I suspect that much of the bill is commission paid to private agencies. Better workforce planning and more extensive use of ‘banks’ of NHS-recruited staff could save the NHS considerable sums of money that could then be invested in frontline services to patients.”

But Lynn Todd, assistant director of HR management for NHS Ayrshire and Arran, insists the health board is doing all it can to bring the cost of agency staff down.

She explained: “We only use agency staff to maintain service when all other solutions have been considered and the use of agency staff is required to provide a safe level of service.

“We are working hard to reduce our use of supplementary staff and have been successful in reducing agency nursing staff by almost 60 per cent over the last five years.

“We are continuing to reduce agency staff, particularly the use of medical locums.

“However, there are difficulties in recruiting to permanent posts in some specialities, such as radiology and accident and emergency. We would therefore need to continue to use medical locums to ensure safe cover until these posts are filled.”

The money spent on agency staff last year represented 1.5 per cent of the total wages bill.