NHS locum physician paid £11,000 to operate a weekend

An NHS hospital paid the record sum of practically £11,000 for one locum doctor to cover a bank vacation weekend, new figures display.

The payment comes amid record spending by the well being support on company medical professionals and nurses, which cost £3.3bn in the final monetary 12 months.

Individuals groups explained the sum – more than half the annual starting salary for a nurse – was “outrageous” and could not be justified.

On an regular doctor’s contract this kind of a sum would equate to a salary of much more than £830,000 a 12 months.

Freedom of Data disclosures reveal that County Durham and Darlington Basis Believe in paid £10,852 for the services of a locum consultant more than final Easter bank holiday weekend.

The cardiologist worked three 9am to 5pm shifts on Very good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, at rates well worth £3,617 a day.

The medical doctor, hired through agency Locum Vision, was also on phone to react to emergency situations, but was never necessary.

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Chesterfield Royal Hospital Foundation Trust, paid £3,456 to locum company ID health-related for a advisor in respiratory medicine to function a 24 hour shift on Easter Monday.

A week later Wye Valley Believe in paid virtually £3,000 to hire a paediatrician for 24 hrs.

The revelations come amid expanding concern about the NHS reliance on temporary workers, at expenses which have plunged the wellness service into deficit.

Senior medical doctors say hospitals are getting forced to pay out premium prices for consultants and nurses, considerably of which went to agencies, because of “desperate” shortages of key workers.

Simon Stevens, the head of the NHS just lately pledged to cap hourly pay costs, and to make sure that trusts in fiscal issues have an overall restrict on spending on agency workers.

Professor Chris Gray, health care director of County Durham and Darlington Foundation Trust, mentioned: “While it is regrettable to have such a substantial company invest our priority is the delivery of secure high quality care.

“We are doing work to recruit far more stroke consultants but the shortage of this kind of expert staff is one thing that is recognised nationally.

“As an organisation we are hunting at our recruitment methods and our clinical configuration for the long term to identify techniques of decreasing our agency spend but although this operate is ongoing we nonetheless need to have to supply a stroke services for the regional population which is meeting national top quality standards.

‘The trust is actively in search of a answer to the problem based on the recruitment of higher good quality substantive advisor workers.”

Locum Vison, an company based mostly in Milton Keynes, says it is the “number one off-framework supplier of medical doctors in niche specialties across the UK”.

This implies it is permitted to charge a lot more than framework agreements the NHS has previously launched in a bid to hold costs down.

The agency says it negotiates with customers to make certain that medical doctors obtain “the ideal achievable price of pay”.

It has lately advertised advisor jobs at up to £125 an hour, with contracts lasting up to 6 months.

Trusts mentioned the payments integrated VAT, fees to agencies, and that they have been trying to fill vacancies.

A spokesman for Chesterfield Royal Hospital Basis Trust explained: “We agreed this expenditure to make certain we could cover the health-related rota at short observe. Much more importantly, it ensured there was a senior clinician available to make decisions about the critically unwell individuals on our wards over the bank holiday. At the time we had a gap in our consultant team, with a common doctor vacancy that has now been filled. We have a robust approach to comply with just before locum expenditure is agreed, but always place safe patient care and services continuity 1st.’

Dr Susan Gilbey, health-related director of Wye Valley Trust mentioned: “The believe in is working incredibly challenging on exploring every avenue to recruit experienced medical professionals to improve personnel numbers inside of our hospitals, as part of the trust’s recruitment and retention plan.”

She mentioned: “The figure of £2936.94 was the highest quantity paid by the Trust to an company medical professional for a single shift amongst the period March 28 to April 19 2015, but it was for a 24 hour shift.

“The expense per hour of this shift (£100.98) includes the agency charge and does not signify the physicians shell out rate. The rest of the value is made up of VAT”.

NHS locum physician paid £11,000 to operate a weekend

Sons of British man killed by German locum GP shed case at European court

Daniel Ubani was on his very first Uk shift when he accidentally gave David Gray an overdose of diamorphine. Photograph: Anthony Collins Solicitors/PA

The sons of a man accidentally killed by a German out-of-hrs physician on his 1st United kingdom shift have misplaced a claim at the European court of human rights that German authorities did not offer an effective investigation into their father’s death.

Rory and Stuart Gray had said their rights had been denied when the German justice system refused to enable the doctor’s extradition to face trial in open court in the United Kingdom. But seven judges at the Strasbourg court rejected their case, saying German authorities had acted in accordance to domestic law.

The court also dismissed the brothers’ assertion that their legitimate interests had been not respected. A single of the judges, Ann Electrical power-Forde, from Ireland, did however raise the query of regardless of whether the authorities ought to have informed Gray’s household that Daniel Ubani, the GP involved, had been convicted in his personal nation in March 2009 of having triggered David Gray’s death by negligence, sentenced to a nine-month suspended prison sentence and give a fine of €5,000, virtually £4,050.

She explained that although there had been no breach of the European convention on human rights, there may in potential need to have to be clarification as to whether subsequent-of-kin had a appropriate to know when criminal proceedings had been ended by a state’s authorities.

Criminal proceedings were opened against the doctor in the United Kingdom and the German choice to prosecute, primarily based on evidence from British police who investigated the death, shocked and angered Uk investigators as effectively as Gray’s loved ones. Ministers have been also concerned that Ubani’s conviction took place without having him appearing in an open court.

Ubani killed David Gray on sixteen February 2008 in his house in Cambridgeshire right after getting recruited by a private agency to operate as a locum medical doctor.

Treating Gray for acute soreness, the physician puzzled two medication and mistakenly injected a tenfold overdose of the painkiller diamorphine.

The brothers had complained that German authorities denied their father’s human rights by not conducting a correct investigation into his death and refusing to allow Ubani’s extradition to Britain.

They also stay furious at what they see as a cover-up by Eurojust, the EU’s judicial co-operation unit, and the United kingdom, as nicely as Germany, in excess of precisely what went on in the months foremost up to the German prosecution.

Sons of British man killed by German locum GP shed case at European court

NHS investing on short-term locum doctors in A&E up 60%, says Labour

Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, stated the government was warned about a looming shortage in emergency medication medical professionals 3 many years ago. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Labour has blamed the coalition’s NHS reforms for a surge in the use of short-term locum medical professionals in A&ampE wards at the price of £83m a yr.

Andy Burnham, the shadow well being secretary, said the government did not pay attention to warnings about a looming shortage of emergency medication physicians since it was “obsessed” with shaking up the overall health support construction.

Labour figures demonstrate investing on locum doctors has shot up by 60% because 2009, with some paid up to £1,500 for a shift. The University of Emergency Medicine mentioned it was not a wise way of investing money.

“My diagnosis is that the complete consequences of the government’s reorganisation of the NHS are now becoming felt,” Burnham informed BBC Radio 4′s These days programme. “3 years in the past, the government was explicitly warned about this dilemma by the College of Emergency Medicine, but they have described feeling like John the Baptist in the wilderness. The government merely was not listening since it was fully centered – obsessed, in truth – on its reorganisation.”

His claims were countered by Dan Poulter, a junior health minister, on the identical programme, though the two guys refused to debate with every other.

Poulter, himself a medical professional, said the dilemma was inherited from Labour but argued that there was now a rising quantity of medics training in emergency care.

“There has been for numerous many years a issue that was first flagged up in 2004 under the previous government about recruiting physicians into A&ampE,” he said. “And it requires 6 years to train A&ampE doctors, so this nicely predates the present government. The very good news is there are now much more long lasting physicians than there have been prior to 2010 – we’ve seen a twenty% improve in the quantity of consultants and there are 352 a lot more medical professionals doing work in A&ampE.”

He accepted that the lengthy and unsociable hours could be a explanation why retaining medical doctors in A&ampE was hard, but stated the coalition was seeking at making alterations.

“It truly is an incredibly tough speciality,” he said. “I worked as a junior medical doctor in A&ampE. It truly is a whole lot of nights, a great deal of weekends. It really is very, very difficult work and it really is essential that we seem at our renegotiation of the contract, which was final negotiated underneath the previous government in 2004, at how we can locate methods of incentivising and encouraging individuals to go into A&ampE and also how we can get that function-life balance for physicians greater, since of the variety of nights and weekends there are. And that is something we are hunting at as a government.”

The Division of Wellness explained all round paying on locums in the NHS was down.

NHS investing on short-term locum doctors in A&E up 60%, says Labour