NHS Forth Valley spent almost £20 million on locum and agency staff last year, according to new figures.
The eye-watering bill has been revealed in figures from NHS Workforce, with the total bill of £19.7 million in 2021/22 representing a sharp rise from the £14 million in 2020/21.
Spending on temporary nursing and midwifery agency staff saw a massive 235 per cent rise over the course of the year, with the spend rising from £1.7 million to £5.6 million this year.
This is in addition to the main bulk of spending on nursing and midwifery ‘bank’ staff, which accounts for £12.9 million of the total bill in Forth Valley.
However, the outlay on locum doctors and dentists has fallen to £1.2 million from £1.7 million in 2020/21.
The sharp rise in spending on temporary staff to fill gaps across the NHS is reflected on a national level, with the total bill for Scotland’s NHS sitting at £423.4 million - up by almost £100 million.
Mid Scotland and Fife MSP Alexander Stewart labelled the current staffing situation in Forth Valley as being at “crisis point” and slammed ministers’ efforts to tackle the problem of staffing across the NHS.
Mr Stewart said: “These figures highlight the SNP’s wastefulness and gross mismanagement of health services in Forth Valley.
“Whilst locum doctors and agency staff, of course, have a crucial role to play in the running of our NHS, the SNP’s dire workforce planning has left us with major staffing shortages.
“Often, this spending on locum staff is merely papering over the cracks because it indicates that permanent staff are completely overwhelmed.
“Having to shell out huge sums on locum staff, along with fees to private agencies, is not an efficient use of limited NHS resources.
“Our frontline staff right across NHS Forth Valley are at crisis point and we need to see an urgent overhaul implemented by SNP Health Secretary, otherwise precious resources will continue to be spent on a temporary solution to a growing problem.”
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “Spend on agency nursing is less than one per cent of NHS Scotland staffing spend, with the majority of temporary staffing coming from staff banks, meaning these are NHS staff, working on NHS terms and conditions.
“The use of temporary staff in an organisation as large and complex as NHS Scotland will always be required to ensure vital service provision during times of planned and unplanned absences such as annual, maternity and sick leave.
“We have over 35,000 nurses and 2,900 doctors registered across NHS Scotland territorial board staff banks.”
An NHS Forth Valley spokesperson said: “Like other NHS Boards across Scotland, we have seen a significant increase in bank and agency costs for nursing staff over the last two years.
“This has mainly been to provide cover for vacancies and sickness, including Covid-19 related absence, to ensure we were able to continue to provide vital health services.
“NHS Forth Valley has, more recently, been able to reduce spend on temporary medical staff cover following additional investment in substantive posts and recruitment drives to fill vacancies.
“Plans are in place to continue to reduce our spend on bank and agency staff and this includes recruiting to permanent positions, wherever possible, continued investment in training and development to enable staff to take on new roles and responsibilities and the growth of our local staff bank to reduce reliance on external bank and agencies.”
