NHS Forth Valley has been criticised for “eye-watering” levels of spending on bank and agency staff.
New figures have revealed that the total bill for outside staff in the health board during 2022/23 was £26.9million - comprised of £24.6million on nursing and midwifery agency and bank spend and another £2.3million on locum staff.
It represents a 32 per cent rise in the total spend from 2021/22 when that figure sat at £19.7million, with the figure have doubled since 2019/20.
Health board chiefs revelaed plans at a meeting last week aimed at cutting down on agency spending following the pandemic, following a national priority set for the eradication of the use of ‘off-framework’ agency nursing staff by the start of this month.
However, Mid Scotland and Fife Conservative MSP Alexander Stewart accused NHS Forth Valley of only discussing the issue following the pressure of his party’s Freedom of Information request - and hit out at the handling of the NHS across Scotland as a key factor in the surging bill.
Mr Stewart said: “These eye-watering figures highlight where our NHS in Forth Valley is going wrong under the SNP.
“The seemingly unabated rise in spending on agency staff here is a shameful reflection on the SNP’s dire workforce planning and management of our NHS.
“Locum doctors and agency staff do indeed play a key role in supporting health services in and I thank commend them for the work they do.
“However, due to the SNP’s failure to recruit enough permanent staff in Forth Valley, there is an ever-increasing reliance on expensive agency staff.
“Every penny has to be a prisoner given the huge demand on services, so we just cannot afford to spend ever-increasing sums on agency staff.”
However, an NHS Forth Valley spokesperson dismissed Mr Stewart’s comments to the Observer - saying that the agenda item on agency spending at the recent meeting was part of ongoing work under way for some time to reduce costs.
The spokesperson added the changes to non-framework agencies were as a result of national changes to contracts for agency staff which are being implemented by all boards.
At last week’s board meeting, NHS Forth Valley chief nursing officer Frances Dodd admitted spending on agency staff reached “significant proportions” during the pandemic and insisted there were no plans to cancel any activity as a result of the planned changes from June 1.
Ms Dodd added: “Scott Urquhart, the Director of Finance, and I are working together to make sure we deliver the efficiencies we can in this case whilst maintaining patient and staff safety at an absolute premium.
“The June 1 deadline describes that we will remove all non-framework agency nurses.
“We have reviewed escalating processes.
“During working hours it will be me who authorises use of any non-framework nurses, or if I am not here Cathie Cowan, the Chief Executive will be.
“We need to report to the Scottish Government any non-framework agency spending. We will use non-framework agency when patient and staff safety needs to be considered.
“We will need to have explored every other option like excess hours, overtime hours, bank hours and work agency before we consider non-framework agencies.
“We don’t plan to cancel any activity to reduce our capacity as part of this initiative but we may have less staff available to us. Where there is patient safety at risk we will break glass to ensure that it is not.”
