Highest Paid Locum Doctor Will Rake In £460,000 This Year- While The Top 10 Earners Cost The NHS £3M

Highest paid locum doctor will rake in £460,000 this year - while the top 10 earners cost the NHS £3million annually

• New figures show consultant in general medicine is highest locum earner
• Paid £459,275 for an 80-hour week, report by Liaison workforce firm shows
• Meanwhile, top 10 locum earners cost the NHS £3million a year
• Comes as Jeremy Hunt told the NHS it must cut its soaring agency bill, warning: 'Expensive staffing agencies are simply ripping off the NHS'

The highest paid agency doctor in Britain is paid £460,000 a year, new figures have revealed.

The locum consultant, who works in general medicine, was paid £459,275 for an 80-hour week, figures show.

Meanwhile the top 10 locum earners cost the NHS £3 million over the course of a year.

It comes as Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt last week told the NHS it must cut its soaring bill for agency staff, warning: 'Expensive staffing agencies are quite simply ripping off the NHS.'




The highest-paid locum doctor in Britain is a consultant in general medicine who is paid £460,000 a year for an 80-hour week, according to new figures (file picture posed by model)

In second place, a consultant paediatrician working an average 65-hour week was paid £320,000, while another doctor working in general medicine took the third highest locum wage of £316,000 a year, working a 57-hour week.

For those consultants working a typical 40-hour week in general medicine, locum pay reached £250,000.

The agencies hiring out these doctors were able to pocket up to £27,000 - more than the annual salary of a nurse - in commission each year, for each doctor placed.


The Taking the Temperature report, published by workforce firm Liaison, anaylsed the pay and commissions rates paid by 40 NHS trusts during the first three quarters of 2014/15.

The figures were then used to calculate annual earnings.

The report processed the bookings for 2,411 locum doctors in that period, accounting for a total spend by the NHS of £24million.

On an average day, Liaison estimates there are 3,500 locum doctors working in England and Wales.

It comes as the Mail revealed one nursing agency charged the NHS £43million last year to supply staff.

Thornbury Nursing Services raked in up to £6.5million from individual hospital trusts, billing them as much as £1,800 a shift.

Research from 126 NHS trusts – two thirds of those in the UK – revealed some hospitals are spending more than £20million a year on agency nurses to plug staffing gaps.

The Liaison report reveals that across all experience grades, locum doctor's hourly pay rates have increased.



The biggest rise in average hourly rates was at consultant level, up £2 from the previous year, at £88.73.

While the average rate for a general medical locum remained static at around £59.20 an hour, the highest amount paid within the speciality was £133 per hour.

The NHS has recommended pay rates, set out by the National Framework Agreement.

But the new figures reveal locums are typically being paid in excess of those figures, deemed the best possible value for money.

Charges for consultants in A&E represent a 'major misalignment to NFA rates', the report reveals, with hourly pay rates at an average of £90.40, but reaching highs of £140 an hour, compared with the NFA's recommended rate of £64.73.

Rates as high as £150 were paid to consultant radiologists, while filling consultant vacancies in under-pressure A&E departments cost as much as £140.



Health secretary Jeremy Hunt last week told the NHS it must cut its soaring bill for agency staff

Meanwhile consultants in general medicine could command as much as £133 per hour.

Of the 40 NHS trusts that took part in the study, the overriding reason for a reliance on locum staff was to 'cover the shortfall created by substantive vacancies'.

Sixty-six per cent of the hours filled by locum doctors were as a result of current vacancies.


The report marks the first time figures have been available about individual shifts, revealing for the first time how much was paid to the highest earning locum doctors.

And it shows typically, medics could command hourly-pay rates that were double those they would have received if they were on the NHS pay roll.

Some of the highest rates charged were for radiologists and Accident & Emergency (A&E) doctors.

Dr Cliff Mann, President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told the Telegraph a chronic shortage of A&E doctors was leaving hospitals with nowhere else to turn but to agencies commanding these high rates.

He said: 'We have got desperate shortages of A&E doctors, with more and more turning away because they feel overworked, and burned out.

'That pushes the prices up and up, so we are stuck in a locums' market, with hospitals forced into a bidding war.'


Liaison managing director, Andrew Armitage, said: 'The response to our annual ‘Taking the Temperature’ report last year was exceptional.

'The report brought together unprecedented levels of insight into how the NHS spends this money.

'The report also facilitated regional benchmarking, with NHS organisations seeing how the pay and commission rates they paid compared to the rest of the country – with some interesting results.

'We are now working with more than 25 per cent of the NHS on direct engagement and we would like to thank our clients for their support in sharing their anonymised data.'

Speaking last week, Mr Hunt pledged to set a maximum hourly rate to prevent situations where agency doctors cost hospitals as much as £3,500 for a single shift.

Every NHS trust will be set an annual limit for spending on agency staff, which will be reduced over time.



Among the highest rates paid were to radiologists who could command up to £150 an hour (file picture)

And hospitals will require specific approval from the Department of Health for any consultancy contracts worth over £50,000.

'Expensive staffing agencies are quite simply ripping off the NHS,' said Mr Hunt.

'The NHS is bigger than all of these companies, so we'll use that bargaining power to drive down rates and beat them at their own game.'

Agency bills have mushroomed in recent years, despite evidence that patients do better when treated by permanent staff.

In the past three years alone, the bill for outside staff has risen from £1.8billion to £3.3billion. It is more than the total cost of dealing with last year's 22million Accident & Emergency admissions.

The total bill for management consultants in the NHS last year hit a staggering £600million – about twice the value of the cancer drugs fund.

Last month a report by the health regulator Monitor found a huge 'over-reliance' on contract and agency staff meant NHS trusts reported a £349million deficit during the last financial year, taking trusts in England overall to £822million in the red.

Source

 

Interesting ..