Doctor paid £5k for a day's work
A locum consultant working for the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust has been paid more than £5,000 for a day's work.
A locum consultant working for the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust has been paid more than £5,000 for a day's work.
The consultant, working for the trust's accident and emergency unit, was paid £5,667 for a 24-hour shift in March this year, according to figures uncovered by a Freedom of Information request.
During the last 12 months, the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, which oversees Stafford and Cannock Chase hospitals, spent £1.4 million on locum doctors and another £2.1 million for agency nurses.
Health trusts are shelling out millions of pounds on agency staff to stand in at understaffed hospitals affected by redundancies, drastic cutbacks and reduced working hours for junior doctors.
The news comes as across the country routine operations, such as cataract surgery and IVF treatments, are being suspended to save money.
By 2014, the NHS has been ordered to make £20 billion of efficiency savings across the board. To help tackle the savings, staff numbers are being looked at and non-urgent treatments and routine operations, such as knee and hip replacements, face cancellation.
The Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, which is about to face a public inquiry over standards of care that may have led to hundreds of patients' deaths at Stafford Hospital, also admitted paying one doctor £399 an hour for an eight-hour shift earning the employee £3,192 for a day's work.
Cure the NHS campaign founder Julie Bailey said: "This is just staggering. This money could have been spent on improving patient care."
Manjit Obhrai, a medical director for the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, has defended the figures.
He said: "The wellbeing and safety of our patients is our top priority. On occasion, and in common with all Trusts, we sometimes have to employ locum medical staff through agencies - a situation which has been exacerbated by the European Working Time Directive for doctors in training.
"In these circumstances we always put patient safety above cost.
"This means that we have to pay the going rate for those staff who are available to cover, sometimes at short notice — these costs are often extremely high, due to the agencies' fees."
