A PLEDGE by the head of the NHS to crack down on staffing agencies “ripping off” hospital trusts has been welcomed in Worcestershire.

Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One on Sunday, May 31, NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens said hospital trusts had been forced to pay far over the odds for temporary staff. And on Tuesday, June 2, health secretary Jeremy Hunt announced the government was planning to set a maximum hourly rate for temporary staff and cap the amount struggling trusts are allowed to spend on agency workers.

The high cost of employing temporary staff has been largely blamed for the dire financial position of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which ended the last financial year £25.9 million in the red – more than twice its initial prediction of £9.8 million – and has predicted it will face a £31.3 million deficit by the end of this year.

The organisation has spent an increasing amount on paying temporary staff over the past year. In April alone the trust spent about £2 million – 9.7 per cent of its overall staffing budget for the months – on paying non-permanent staff.

In April the trust hired 147 temporary staff, slightly fewer than it had in previous months, but still far above its monthly target of no more than 85.

A trust spokesman said the organisation was working to reduce its reliance on temporary staff but declined to comment further.

Chairman of patient’s watchdog Healthwatch Worcestershire Peter Pinfield welcomed the move to cut the amount of temporary staff in the county.

"Healthwatch has been concerned for some time now about the escalating agency and locum budget costs in all of our local hospitals not only because it is adding to the over spend in a very dramatic way, but you never get consistent and long term loyalty,” he said. “It’s just filling a hole.

“Of course we need to staff our hospitals up to the safe levels in order to function safely with good quality care, but that should be provided by our trained and recruited staff.”

Mr Pinfield also called for more training opportunities for doctors and nurses as well as more joined-up working between healthcare providers.

“Newly trained doctors and nurses must spend their formative years working in the NHS not swan off to other countries and the private sector at the first opportunity,” he said.

“Unless we tackle this problem head-on we will never be able to move to the seven-day provision of services that so many of patients and service users would like to see.”

Nationally the NHS spent £3.3 billion on paying temporary staff last year – more than the cost of treating every A&E admission – with some agency doctors paid as much as £3,500 per shift.

But agency bosses have claimed they are being used as a scapegoat for “mismanagement” of the NHS.

Director of policy at the Recruitment and Employment Confederation Tom Hadley said: "Agency nurses play a vital role in ensuring safe staffing ratios and quality patient care in an NHS that cannot find sufficient permanent staff”.

"(Mr Hunt) is scapegoating agencies for the NHS's own mismanagement of workforce planning.”