Anger over consultants paid £1,500 a night to stay in hotel

It has been left with the weekly bill of more than £10,000 despite being warned in May that a huge restructuring of NHS services in Glasgow, which saw some services moved from the sites moved to a new super hospital, meant the Beatson would be left without 24-hour anaesthetic cover.

In an unprecedented open letter to the Scottish Government at that time, 86 professors, consultants, junior doctors and specialty trainees described a "desperate situation", saying the withdrawal of acute medical support services risked patient safety.

They said the issue had been raised formally in June last year and that repeated efforts to work with managers to address the situation had been ignored.

The health board said it would implement a "long-term sustainable alternative" but in the meantime, it has been left reliant on paying out a sum that on a pro-rata basis, would amount to a salary of more than £300,000 per year, while also having to meet hotel bills.

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, a Glasgow MSP, said that taxpayers would be appalled at what she described as an "incredible cost" which she said appeared to have been caused by "simple bad planning."

She added: "Our NHS is strapped for cash, and it can hardly afford this level of outlay. The Scottish Government must look at this as a matter of urgency.

"It’s an incredible fee by anyone’s standards and the money spent trying to fix this mistake is money taken away from other areas of healthcare like drugs or operations. We can't allow for a precedent to be set of paying so ludicrously over the odds for on-call staff cover."

It is the latest criticism to be aimed at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde following the opening of the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital which cost almost £850 million and is among the largest health facilities of its kind in Europe.

Shortly after it opened its doors in April, it was described by some patients as a "war zone" as the health board struggled to manage what it said was the largest ever hospital migration in the UK.

In June, the hospital had the worst A&E waiting times in Scotland leading the Scottish Government to send in an expert 'hit squad' in a bid to turn it around. The most recent figures show that the situation has improved, although it is still failing to hit A&E targets.

Speaking about the £1,500 per shift payments to doctors, a spokesman for The British Medical Association Scotland said that patient safety should always be the priority and that meant ensuring the right staff were in place to deliver services in a "safe and sustainable way".

Tom Waterson, chair of Unison's health committee, said with better long-term planning the situation could have been avoided. "It is not difficult to think of ways in which this money could have been better spent within the health service," he added.

A spokesman for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: "Services in our hospitals across the city, including Gartnavel General Hospital, have taken part in a major restructuring process this summer.

"We put in place an infrastructure to support the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre during the introduction of the initial changes.

"As a result of changes in anaesthetic training, we have had to provide full consultant cover at Gartnavel General Hospital overnight in the short term. We are working to put in place a long term sustainable alternative. The out of hours consultant is paid at a locally agreed rate, consistent with a rate paid by other boards, and is provided suitable accommodation.

"It’s important to reiterate that we would never implement any change that puts the safety of our patients’ at risk or which do not have clinical support."