THE Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has accused the coalition government of ‘truly incompetent planning’ over NHS spending on agency nurses and staff. It has spiralled to more than £5.5bn over the past four years and is continuing to rise.
New figures released by the Department of Health following a parliamentary question show that NHS Foundation Trusts spent £4.3bn between 2010-11 and 2013-14 on agency and temporary staff.
Other NHS Trusts spent £1.2bn in 2013/2014, but figures were not available for these trusts over the previous years, meaning the total bill for the last four years could be closer to £10bn.
Reliance on agencies, at a cost of up to £1,800 per day per nurse, comes as the number of nurse training places in England has been cut.
According to the latest figures, there were 7,000 fewer qualified nurses in August 2013 compared with May 2010, excluding health visitors, school nurses and midwives.
RCN general secretary Dr Peter Carter said: ‘These spending figures beggar belief and are the result of truly incompetent workforce planning.
‘Nursing staff are sometimes seen as an easy target for cost savings, only for the NHS to find itself dangerously short-staffed and having to plug the gap. This means individual hospitals and the NHS as a whole are spending too much on agency staff and recruitment from overseas.’
Trusts are now facing what Monitor, the NHS regulator, calls ‘unprecedented financial pressure’ due to their reliance on agency staff.
Monitor’s latest quarterly report warned that ‘a planned year-on-year reduction in agency staff usage has not materialised’.
It added: ‘Instead, spending on contract and agency staff is double the planned figure. In the medium to long term, this level of spend on temporary staff cannot be sustained.’
Meanwhile, the Royal College of GPs (RCGPs) has warned there is a risk of ‘dangerous consequences for patients in the light of continued underfunding’ of health services in Scotland.
RCGP Scotland chairman Dr John Gillies said it was ‘incumbent on the government to act’ to safeguard patient safety, adding: ‘Further cuts to the resources GPs have with which to care for patients can only exacerbate the problem.
‘A real-terms drop in funding share of 2.2%, as outlined in the Draft Budget 2015/16, can only deepen the current, very real crisis.’
A RCGP study suggested one in four Scots cannot get an appointment with their GP within a week.
The survey found a majority of people interviewed believe there are too few GPs and would like to see funds moved from other parts of the health service to GPs.