LOCUM doctors are being drafted in from New Zealand and South Africa for as much as £3,000 per shift due to ongoing recruitment issues in the NHS.
More temporary physicians are being employed in Scotland’s hospitals as health boards struggle to fill a rising number of vacancies.
At one point in 2014-15, NHS Lothian paid one doctor a total of £3,341 to work a single 18-hour shift.
BMA Scotland chairman, Dr Peter Bennie, said: “The NHS in Scotland has been facing serious difficulties in recruiting and retaining doctors for some time and this increase in expenditure on locum staff is further evidence that this problem is a growing one.
“The only way that this issue can be tackled in the long-term is by filling vacant posts on a permanent basis.”
The Scottish Government says the number of NHS staff is at an all-time high; but opposition MSPs are calling for greater value for money.
Scottish Labour’s public services spokesman Dr Richard Simpson, himself a former GP, said: “We are now seeing real problems as a consequence,... with huge amounts of wasteful, extremely expensive spending in our NHS when prudence is needed. We need to make our NHS budget go further.”
Health Secretary Shona Robison said: “The use of locum staff allows NHS boards to respond to periods of absence. Scotland’s NHS has more staff than ever – an increase of 8.3 per cent under the SNP – including almost three times the number of A&E consultants and over 2,200 more nurses.”
Audit Scotland’s annual report showed that in 2014-15, health boards spent £107.5million on locums, up from £88.2m in 2013-14, while consultant vacancies had risen from 325 to 408.
The report said health boards were struggling to recruit and retain staff and were being forced to advertise in countries on the other side of the world.
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