Highlands and Islands MSP, Edward Mountain today challenged the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport after new figures revealed that NHS Highland has spent over £20 million in total to cover staff shortages.
NHS Highland’s reliance on locums continues and the health board has spent £1,823,976 on payroll locums and £8,839,405 on agency locums. The figures also show that £9,117,823 was spent on bank and relief staff and £2,555,851 on agency staff.
During a session of Portfolio Questions at the Scottish Parliament, Edward Mountain asked the Scottish Government: “what action it is taking to assist NHS Highland to reduce its reliance on locum staff?”
The Cabinet Secretary replied: “The number of medical and dental staff in NHS Highland has in fact increased by 55.2 per cent between 2006 and 2019. However, NHS Highland continues to focus on reducing both the cost of locums and their reliance on them. Ongoing actions taken by the board include a weekly control meeting, on-going cost improvement programme, continuing work to recruit the cohort of clinical fellow posts, continuing work to permanently recruit to permanent posts, including offering flexible working and alternative roles to encourage doctors in particular to work in NHS Highland and they have also been engaged with a medical recruitment agency focusing on international recruitment to vacant posts across NHS Highland, in some way emulating the success of NHS Grampian in that regard.”
Edward Mountain then asked: “Now we know that the construction of the new Elective Care Centre will be delayed until early next year and latest figures show that NHS Highland are spending over £20 million a year on bank, relief and agency staff payrolls. Is the Cabinet Secretary sure she will be able to fully staff the Elective Care Centre when it is finally finished without increasing these costs?”
The Cabinet Secretary said: “So in the overall NHS Highland spend it is worth noting that in terms of agency use of nursing and midwifery agency staff, that figure has decreased. So whilst overall Mr Mountain is correct, I do think facts are important. In terms of where NHS Highland is concerned I am sure that he will be pleased to know that in the last quarter the vacancy rate in NHS Highland decreased to 11.7 per cent whilst the number of longer term vacancies of six months of more also decreased by 7.4 per cent.”
Following their exchange, Edward Mountain commented:
“The delay to the construction of the Elective Care Centre means that the Scottish Government won’t have to worry in the short-term about staffing it. However, this problem is not going to go away forever.
With NHS Highland costs for locum, bank, and agency staff running at £20m per annum, this Scottish Government needs to come up with a plan on how to staff the Elective Care Centre as temporary staffing is clearly not the answer.”