An agency nurse picked up £1,100 for a 11 and a half-hour shift at Walsall Manor Hospital, it has emerged.
Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust paid out more than £14.4 million to agency nurses and locum doctors in three years. The trust paid the nurse £337.25 for the five hours worked between 7pm and midnight at a night rate of £67.45. The same nurse was then paid £766 for a six and a half-hour shift the next morning – an hourly rate of £117.95. The total payments to the agencies and locum doctors amounted to £14.4m between 2012 and 2015.
During this period there have been seven occasions where the trust paid more than £1,000 for a locum doctor to cover a shift. The highest payout for a locum doctor last year was £1,150 for a medicine and long terms conditions consultant who was on call for three days in March. The highest payout for the previous financial year was in November 2013 when a paediatric consultant was paid £1,417 for a 17-hour night shift.
In the 2014/15 financial year, the trust paid £2,310,000 to locum doctors and £3,335,000 to agency nurses – a total of £5,645,000. Both the 2014/15 and 13/14 figures are a huge increase on the £3,059,000 spent in 2012/13, including £1,627,000 on locum doctors and £1,432,000 on agency nurses.
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Filed under: Hospital
