Prudent NHS Forth Valley health chiefs are doubling down on the need to cut back on agency nurses as they aim to rein in their spending post-pandemic.
The NHS Scotland nursing agency spend for 2023-24 is projected to be around £200million.
Based on previous years, this is an “unsustainable cost for supplementary staffing,” according to the Scottish Government.
This projection resulted in the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) commissioning and leading a task and finish group looking at supplementary staffing including nursing agency spend and leading the work to eradicate the use of off-framework agency nursing staff from June 1.
Frances Dodd, NHS Forth Valley Chief Nursing Officer said at Tuesday’s board meeting: “We want to ensure the best value and best professional standards.
“This is being done on a national approach basis, we are aligned with all the boards in Scotland.
“The NHS Forth Valley escalating spend position went to significant proportions in the years of the pandemic.
“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.
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“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.”
There is a national framework for agency supply, managed in partnership with national procurement for framework suppliers (more than 20 suppliers).
Each board also has, up until this point, had the ability to add off-framework suppliers, these suppliers set their own rates and commissions that each board have to pay, which are above the agreed framework.
During the pandemic and as we continue to recover, off-framework agency use has tripled in NHS Forth Valley due to increased levels of sickness, unfilled vacancies, unfunded ward areas opened, and additional contingency beds spaces utilised, this is not financially sustainable.
The use of contingency beds and unfunded beds has placed a significant reliance on the use of supplementary staff, as well as the increase in the turnover rate within NHS Forth Valley, being at the highest level in recent years, resulting in a further reliance on supplementary staff.
