HOSPITALS across Scotland have paid some agency nurses more than £1500 to cover staffing rotas, figures reveal.
NHS Lanarkshire confirmed the highest amount it paid was £1565 for a single shift in 2015/16, closely followed by NHS Lothian, which paid £1528 to an agency the previous year.
In NHS Ayrshire and Arran, bosses estimated the highest single payment for a shift – defined as more than eight hours but less than 14 – was between £1300 and £1600.
In NHS Tayside, an agency was paid £1251 for a single shift last year.
Most health boards refused to release the data, which had been requested through freedom of information by the Scottish Conservatives.
The Scottish Government has been repeatedly criticised for its increasing use of bank and agency nurses, as well as high levels of vacancies, with hundreds of roles lying empty for months at a time.
Norman Provan, associate director at the Royal College of Nursing Scotland, said: “While some investment in agency nursing will always be needed to cover unexpected events like sickness absence to ensure safe patient care, health boards cannot continue to ratchet up spending on agency nurses. That is not sustainable.”
NHS boards spent £158 million paying for bank and agency nurses to cover shifts.
Shadow health secretary Donald Cameron said: “It is staggering that hard-pressed health boards could find themselves paying this much to an agency for a nursing shift.
“Not only is it an astonishing waste of taxpayers’ money, but it’s a slap in the face to staff nurses who can only dream of such remuneration."
Health Secretary Shona Robison said the overall bill for agency nurses and midwives was more than 11 per cent lower than it was 10 years ago.
She added: "A record number of people now work within the NHS in Scotland, with 99.6 per cent of all care delivered by NHS staff."
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