Health chief justifies £122-per-hour nurse (From Worcester News)

Health chief justifies £122-per-hour nurse

12:30pm Thursday 31st December 2009 in News By David Paine, @davidpaineWN #worcsnews

ON THE CASE: The use of agency staff by the NHS has been criticised by the Tories after pay rates were revealed.

NHS bosses in Worcestershire paid an agency nurse £122 an hour, it has been revealed.

The amount Worcestershire Primary Care Trust splashed out on the registered nurse to cover a bank holiday shift was equivalent to an annual salary of £214,936. Nurses can usually expect to be paid at a rate equivalent to earning between £20,000 and £26,000 a year.

The amount paid to the stand-in nurse even eclipsed that which they paid a consultant psychiatrist. That person was on a rate of £87.20 an hour between May and October – equivalent to being paid £153,690 a year.

The trust, which is the organisation that oversees health services across the county such as GPs, also paid a project accountant £64 an hour, equivalent to £112,800 a year, between that five-month period.

A spokeperson for Worcestershire PCT said: “The £121.95 per hour agency fee that has been quoted in this Freedom of Information request was a one-off rate that was applied for a single day only, due to a number of exceptional circumstances.

“The day in question was a bank holiday, which meant double the normal agency hourly rate. We always explore all available in-house staffing options but sometimes this cannot be avoided without risking patient safety.”

The spokesman said the trust, as part of an efficiency drive, has significantly decreased the amount of money it has spent on stand-in staff this year.

Meanwhile, the figures uncovered by the Conservative Party under the Freedom of Information Act, also show Worcestershire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust paid a consultant in learning disability services £104.97 an hour, equivalent to £185,009 a year, between June and October.

The trust, which provides mental health services to people across the county, also paid £53.13 an hour to a productivity improvement programme project manager between May and October. That is equivalent to earning £93,641 per annum.

Christine Marsh, spokesman for Worcestershire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, said agency staff are only used as “a last resort” and in key positions where specialist skills are needed. “The agency we used for the consultant came from an approved list. So while it sounds like a lot of money, he was being paid within the agreed rate,” she said. West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust paid a human resources clerk £18.65 an hour, equivalent to £32,870 a year.

Figures relating to Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust were not in the list. But the organisation that runs the county’s hospitals has already spent more than £7.9 million on stand-in agency staff between April and November this year. The Conservatives claim the figures highlight rising costs within the NHS despite Labour’s pledges to cut inefficiencies.