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£12m spent by Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust staff cover

More than £12 million has been spent on agency workers as hospital bosses battle to cover a shortage of nurses and staff.

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But Sandwell's hospital trust says it is taking action to reduce the annual bill, bringing it down from more than £1.1m a month to around £800,000.

Spending at Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust increased at the start of the year, but health chiefs say this was due to increased admissions, which meant they needed more staff.

This means recruiting extra staff including nurses and workers to slash sickness levels to reduce the need for temporary cover.

The trust, which runs Sandwell Hospital, says it still needs agency staff, particularly for specialist areas or for short-term projects, such as IT improvements.

It comes after NHS inspectors declared that Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust requires improvement.

The trust was told that the safety of services at Sandwell, including surgery and the outpatients department, are inadequate, although critical care and end of life care are rated as good. Bosses are now recruiting more staff including A&E consultants and nurses and they say they are continuing to monitor staff levels.

Chief executive Toby Lewis said: "During the last 12 months, we have focused hard on reducing the use of temporary staff, as we believe permanent teams are best placed to provide great care. We have reduced monthly agency expenditure from more than £1.1m to about £800,000.

"With some additional beds open to cope with demand this has risen slightly since the start of 2015, but we have continued to succeed in reducing the use of agency healthcare assistants.

"In the year ahead, our recruitment drive will help us to reduce this spend further and so will our focus on reducing short-term sickness," said Mr Lewis.

"Some agency use will continue in difficult-to-recruit-to specialities or where specific skills are needed for a short period, such as improving our IT.

"Our use of agency staff each month is publicly available information."

Last month it was revealed that 169 operations were cancelled between February 2014 and January 2015, with the highest number called off in December.

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