Hartlepool's hospital trust spends £432,000 on agency workers in eight months during pandemic

The sum was spent between April and November 2020, with £70,000 from the bill specifically attributed to Covid-19.

It also included the cost of re-hiring former staff as locums – so called ‘flexi-retirees’ – who were invited back into the NHS to boost workforce numbers and assist with the added pressures caused by the pandemic.

A report to the trust’s board of directors said that agency spending to temporarily fill medical and dental roles in the year to date was up by £82,000 when compared with the same period the previous year.

While there had been a year-on-year increase the overall trend for such spending has been falling over recent years.

In 2014/15 the trust, which operates hospitals in Hartlepool and Stockton, spent £3.72million on agency locums, but by 2018/19 the figure had fallen to £508,156.

The University Hospital of Hartlepool site provides patients with a wide range of diagnostic services and outpatient clinics, day case and low-risk surgery.

The University Hospital of North Tees in Stockton site provides emergency and planned medical and surgical care, maternity services and a wide range of diagnostic services and outpatient clinics.

Figures show the overall spend for all medical and dental staff at the trust – including those on the full-time payroll – to date in 2020/21 stands at £37.7million with agency only making up approximately 1% of that figure.

The report said: “Agency usage is mainly due to long-standing trust vacancies and there are a number of locums booked over the next few months.

“Therefore increases in agency spend [are] likely to continue.

“[However] efforts are being made to try to keep costs to a minimum.”

It said agency medical locums could command very high rates of pay – on average between £80 and £100 an hour – and the organisation had clear governance processes in place in order to fully explore other options before going down the locum route.

The report said the trust was continuing to have difficulty in recruiting consultants in some areas due to local and national shortfalls.

These included consultants in anaesthetics, radiology, urology, elderly care, emergency care, haematology, microbiology and histopathology.

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