NHS spend on agency staff at risk under ‘better’ procurement plan
6 August 2013
Spending on agency staff in the NHS is set to fall by hundreds of millions of pounds a year under plans published yesterday to improve the way the NHS buys its goods and services.
Tue, 6 Aug 2013Spending on agency staff in the NHS is set to fall by hundreds of millions of pounds a year under plans published yesterday to improve the way the NHS buys its goods and services.
The policy document, Better Procurement, Better Value, Better Care, A Procurement Development Programme for the NHS, published by health minister Dr Dan Poulter, outlined plans to cut spending on non-permanent staff from its current level of £2.4bn a year. The proposal is part of a drive to find more than £1.5bn of procurement efficiencies over the next three years.
The paper highlights “enormous differences“ across the NHS in how much different NHS Trusts spend on agency staff. At one end of the scale, between 2009 and 2012 Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust spent an average of 11.9% of its workforce expenditure on agency staff, while South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust spent nothing.
The paper points out that if all NHS Trusts ensured that the percentage of non-permanent staff was within the national average of 4% of the workforce, the NHS could reduce expenditure on agency staff by £230m a year.
The paper says that greater transparency is vital, and one of its key recommendations is the creation of a comparison site showing how much each trust spends on different items of expenditure, including on agency staffing.
Poulter says: “We need to ensure all trusts are alerted to these types of opportunities [to reduce expenditure on agency staff] by ensuring transparent data and identifying and sharing the best practices found in high-performing trusts.”
A Department of Health spokesperson tells Recruiter: ‘We cannot tell hospitals exactly what to spend their money on because they are all independent, but a lot of them don’t even know what they are spending their money on compared with other hospitals.”
Greg Wood, commercial director at healthcare recruiter Your World Recruitment Group, says it remains to be seen whether the NHS will be able to reduce expenditure by the hundreds of mullions of pounds it wants.
And he questions the need for a market comparison site, when he says the hospitals can already compare prices that agencies are charging through Government Procurement Service frameworks. “They can see the pricing for the different agencies already,” he says.
The policy document, Better Procurement, Better Value, Better Care, A Procurement Development Programme for the NHS, published by health minister Dr Dan Poulter, outlined plans to cut spending on non-permanent staff from its current level of £2.4bn a year. The proposal is part of a drive to find more than £1.5bn of procurement efficiencies over the next three years.
The paper highlights “enormous differences“ across the NHS in how much different NHS Trusts spend on agency staff. At one end of the scale, between 2009 and 2012 Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust spent an average of 11.9% of its workforce expenditure on agency staff, while South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust spent nothing.
The paper points out that if all NHS Trusts ensured that the percentage of non-permanent staff was within the national average of 4% of the workforce, the NHS could reduce expenditure on agency staff by £230m a year.
The paper says that greater transparency is vital, and one of its key recommendations is the creation of a comparison site showing how much each trust spends on different items of expenditure, including on agency staffing.
Poulter says: “We need to ensure all trusts are alerted to these types of opportunities [to reduce expenditure on agency staff] by ensuring transparent data and identifying and sharing the best practices found in high-performing trusts.”
A Department of Health spokesperson tells Recruiter: ‘We cannot tell hospitals exactly what to spend their money on because they are all independent, but a lot of them don’t even know what they are spending their money on compared with other hospitals.”
Greg Wood, commercial director at healthcare recruiter Your World Recruitment Group, says it remains to be seen whether the NHS will be able to reduce expenditure by the hundreds of mullions of pounds it wants.
And he questions the need for a market comparison site, when he says the hospitals can already compare prices that agencies are charging through Government Procurement Service frameworks. “They can see the pricing for the different agencies already,” he says.
- Click for more healthcare and medical recruitment industry news and views from recruiter.co.uk
