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Agencies ‘are paid £500m’ annually to staff the NHS

By Nagasunder in UK Business News, posted December 27, 2022

According to reports, middlemen bill the NHS half a billion pounds annually for agency workers.

A Daily Mail audit uncovered this extra amount which is being paid on top of the exorbitant compensation given to locum nurses and physicians.

Due to the increasing demand for NHS services following the epidemic, recruitment agencies have bragged about achieving record profits, with one director alone earning more than £500,000 last year.

Former Tory Cabinet minister Theresa Villiers told The Daily Mail, "This is horrible and it has to stop.

Patient care should be the priority for this money. The NHS and the government both need to take control of this and lower these expenditures. This is ripping off the taxpayer and the NHS.”

Locums have been used more frequently to cover rota gaps because the NHS is experiencing a staffing crisis with shortages of 12,000 hospital doctors and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives. A single day to a month's worth of work can be requested from locums.

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The audit revealed that NHS England spent £3 billion of its $136 billion overall budget on agency workers this year to fill staffing vacancies.

Source: The Telegraph

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