NHS boards paid £1,500 for agency nurse's shift

Two health boards paid more than £1,500 for an agency nurse to cover a single hospital shift, new figures reveal.

NHS Lanarkshire spent £1,565 on a single shift in 2015-16, while the largest amount paid by NHS Lothian in the past three years was £1,528.

The figures were obtained under Freedom of Information by the Scottish Conservatives, who branded them "a slap in the face" to NHS staff nurses.

Health Secretary Shona Robison said agency bills were down 11% in 10 years.

Other health boards to pay more than £1,000 on a single nursing shift since 2013 included NHS Ayrshire and Arran, which said its highest fee was "between £1,300 and £1,600".

NHS Tayside confirmed it paid £1,251 for a shift in 2015-16.

'Plug gaps'

Using agency and bank staff cost health boards across Scotland a total of £158m in 2015-16.

Tory health spokesman Donald Cameron said it was "staggering that hard-pressed health boards could find themselves paying this much to an agency for a nursing shift".

He added: "Not only is it an astonishing waste of taxpayers' money, but it's a slap in the face to staff nurses who can only dream of such remuneration.

"Bank and agency nurses play an important role when it comes to helping plug gaps in the NHS.

"But demands of more than £1,500 for a single shift are an abuse, and one health boards should not bow to.

"The SNP's woeful lack of workforce planning and failure to train enough nurses has created a situation where hospitals are too dependent on bank and agency staff.

"The result of that is health boards paying through the nose, when an adequately resourced rota could have done the job at a fraction of the price.

"Following these revelations, ministers should examine these instances of extremely high payments to agencies, and act to ensure they don't occur again."

'Drive down cost'

Shona Robison said bank and agency staff allowed heath boards to cope with peaks in demand.

She added: "Boards only use bank and agency staff when they have to and the vast majority are the board's own nursing staff.

"Agency staff make up only 0.4% of overall staffing numbers and the amount of money spent on agency nurses and midwives is 11.3% lower today than it was a decade ago.

"We want to reduce agency use as much as possible and earlier this year we launched a new initiative, in partnership with NHS National Services Scotland, to drive down the cost and use of all temporary agency staff.

"Around £6bn is spent on the NHS workforce annually. A record number of people now work within the NHS in Scotland, with 99.6% of all care delivered by NHS staff.

"This includes more than 43,100 qualified nurses and midwives, an increase of more than 2,100 since this government took office."