University Hospital of North Staffordshire banks on reducing £8m bill
A HOSPITAL is trying to recruit more part-time nurses in a bid to cut the huge sums being spent on agency staff.
The cost of reopening just four wards run by short-term agency nurses and locum doctors has already been calculated at a staggering £50,000 a day.
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APPEAL: The University Hospital of North Staffordshire.
The 80 beds are needed by the University Hospital of North Staffordshire to increase patient flow and slash A&E unit delays.
But agencies make charges above the nurses' salaries and the hospital wants to reduce the reliance on them by boosting its own workforce.
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Now it has launched a recruitment drive for so-called bank nurses – directly employed staff, who work anything from a few hours to several days a week.
An open day is being staged next Friday to generate interest and interview nurses so they can join the scheme immediately.
The bank currently stands at 82 qualified nurses and 300 assistants but it has been left depleted over the past few months by numbers deciding to go full-time.
No target has been issued but officials are keen to see the bank grow by several hundred.
Bank nurses are often staff who have interrupted their careers to have families but now want to get back into the profession part-time.
Patients looked after by them also have more chance of seeing the same face as agency staff are drawn from a wide number of companies and continuity of care is lost.
The trust wants staff to work in its new trauma and emergency centres as well as in medical and surgical wards, child health, critical care and operating theatres.
Candidates will need at least six months post-registration experience in an acute hospital setting and the deadline for applications is October 31. The open day will be on Ward 27 of the Royal Infirmary site between 9am and 5pm. Nurse bank manager Barbara Walsh said: "Joining the bank is a great way for nurses to work the number of days or hours that suit them. Our new hospital is a fantastic facility and I think nurses will really want to join us.
"Our main focus has always and will always be to put patient safety first and by having a dynamic and flexible nurse bank we will ensure we continue to provide the highest standard of care."
Figures issued by the hospital's finance department show that between April 1 and the end of August it spent nearly £8 million on agency staff – £5.4million more than it had planned in its budget.
In the same period it spent nearly £119 million on permanent staff.
Union leaders said management could have avoided the shortages by not reducing nurse levels last year for a programme to cut beds.
Rob Irving, secretary of the Unison branch, added: "At the time we said we did not believe the policy would work – but now, having cut numbers, they are having to recruit both permanent and bank nurses again."
Comments
by cooljay
Sunday, October 28 2012, 6:26PM
“Ant service is only as good as the weakest link.
To sack staff and re-employ is utter madness.
The hospital needs a change of culture and management.
Perhaps the management should not have sacked staff with experience and thus knowledge and then when things do go wrong as they will with patients they have the skills and experience to fix problems before they cause more harm or death.
To get bank staff of several hundred will be hard and unless the staff are valued and can park at work and the NHS staff have pay rises they will not stay.
Most bank staff if they are good can warn a lot more as locum and agency staff.
The lack of workforce planning is a big worry but sadly nothing new.
Trying to fix a problem that was only a slight problem a few years ago will take more time and money. Moreover patients wait for beds or A and E treatment. Also £5 million in for months means £15 million by the year end April 2013. How can the trust fund this? And get the required Foundation status?
Another tax payer bail out?
Why not sack managers and keep front line staff? But that is common sense and NHS managers have no common sense just sit in meetings to discuss other meetings and then plan another meeting nobody makes a plan !!!! How bust is the trust?”
by Robnoxious
Monday, October 22 2012, 11:18PM
“The bank staff only get paid the same as the others members of staff doing that particular job. they are employed by the N. H. S. The agency staff are different, the care workers being on low pay, the others getting more money, but the bottom line being the agencies charging the N, H, S. an arm and a leg. The agencies will employ anyone willing to work for minimum pay, more money for them . You get what you pay for. I believe that unless it was a last resort that they were using there own Bank Staff, N, H, S, as this would be costing no more than a permanent staff member. Which i know to be the case in the other hospital in the area.”
by shufti
Monday, October 22 2012, 4:18PM
“ValiantRob, porters, junior nurses, domestics, kitchen assistants, or maintenance people would not be performance managed, they would be sacked, fact! but it seems the higher up the tree you climb the less responsible you are held. Decisions made by management sometimes begger belief but somehow can always be explained away, but ValiantRob you are correct in saying they are a protected species no matter what resources or how much money they waste they will not be held to account they will never admit they got it wrong even though it's obvious even to a layman that they have in your words "cocked up!"”
by ValiantRob
Monday, October 22 2012, 1:39PM
“If Porters, or junior Nurses made such disasterous decisions that wasted so much money and put patients at risk they would be performance managed. But it seems the people in senior positions who make such cock ups have their positions and the vast salaries that go with them protected.”
by yamahaman
Sunday, October 21 2012, 6:41PM
“Another case of HR knows best I think, last year they got rid of good staff, then there is a need to pay over the odds for bank staff, But is anyone accountable ? don't think so.”