Surgeons in strike threat over pay

Surgeons at a crisis-hit Midlands hospital threatened to "down tools" in a dispute about being paid £1,000 for just four hours of overtime.

The row at Stafford Hospital emerged as new figures showed that some NHS consultants are making more than £100,000 a year in overtime alone.

Bosses at the hospital tried to reduce the amount of cash being paid to its orthopaedic surgeons from £1,000 to £500 for a four-hour operating session.

But the surgeons refused to agree to the reduction and instead managers were forced to compromise on a figure of £750 at a time when the hospital was facing a budget shortfall.

The then Chief Operating Officer Angela Lamb told Stafford Hospital's finance committee that orthopaedic surgeons were "downing tools", leading to a danger that it would miss the 18-week target for patients to be referred to the hospital for treatment in 2009.

The hospital is at the centre of a public inquiry into its poor standards of care.

Across the NHS, hospitals are being forced to pay as much as £100,000-a-year to individual consultants in overtime in order to tackle a shortage of staff, gaps in rotas, and an increase in demand on the NHS.

Darren Cattell, director of finance at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, which has 100 consultants, said: "The trust pays a waiting list initiative rate of £750 per four-hour session."

Basic pay for consultants in England stands at almost £90,000 a year on average, paying for 10 four-hour blocks in a full-time week.

Those consultants who do private work are also obliged to do an extra four-hour session paid at their basic rate if their NHS trust needs them.

Any extra work beyond that attracts a higher rate.

The average payment is between £500 and £700 for four-hour sessions.The rates are set by individual health trusts so there is no national picture of how much overtime is costing the NHS.