The extraordinary boom in agencies supplying doctors and nurses to the NHS
amid a rapidly deepening deficit in the health service is revealed today.
An investigation by The Telegraph shows how total revenue at 10 of Britain’s
biggest medical recruiters rose by almost 40 per cent over three years, with
the companies posting overall takings of £7.7 billion since 2009.
The businessmen running the agencies are earning up to £950,000 a year and
living expensive lifestyles in properties worth millions of pounds, prompting
warnings last night that the NHS needed “to get a grip”.
The chairman of one firm, which supplies both the NHS and the private
sector, lives in a £9.5 million house in central
Top: (left - right) James Caan, Richard MacMillan and Paul Pindar. Bottom: (left - right) The
home of Charles Safapour of Mayday healthcare, the
home of Richard MacMillan and the
10:00PM BST
The extraordinary boom in agencies supplying doctors and nurses to the NHS
amid a rapidly deepening deficit in the health service is revealed today.
An investigation by The Telegraph shows how total revenue at 10 of Britain’s
biggest medical recruiters rose by almost 40 per cent over three years, with
the companies posting overall takings of £7.7 billion since 2009.
The businessmen running the agencies are earning up to £950,000 a year and
living expensive lifestyles in properties worth millions of pounds, prompting
warnings last night that the NHS needed “to get a grip”.
The chairman of one firm, which supplies both the NHS and the private
sector, lives in a £9.5 million house in central
Despite rules suggesting agency doctors should only be used in
"exceptional circumstances", the use of locums has soared
Official figures show that NHS spending on temporary workers has reached a
record £3.3 billion high, and “catastrophic” levels of debt are being
blamed on last year’s rise in agency bills.
Simon Stevens, the NHS England chief executive, has promised to tackle the
high cost of agency spending. He told the Andrew Marr Show on
The Telegraph's investigation shows how revenue at one of the NHS’s largest outsourced recruitment firms, Independent
Clinical Services (ICS), increased by 60 per cent in just two years, to
£314 million.
Meanwhile, spending on agency staff by NHS foundation trusts – two-thirds of
hospitals – rose by 64 per cent over a two-year period, pushing the health service
into debt.
Figures obtained by The Telegraph show that Barts
Health NHS Trust in
It was followed by King’s
The trusts blame their reliance on temporary staff on a lack of qualified
nurses. Many have tried to employ more nurses in the wake of the Mid Staffs
scandal, but struggled to find permanent workers, causing the agency bill to
spiral.
Critics say the problem has been caused by underinvestment in training, a
lack of any effective cap on the rates that agencies charge and a failure to
recruit enough staff.
In February this year, Simon Stevens, the head of the NHS, warned that
spending was “ballooning”
NHS reports last month revealed an £822 million deficit across the
health service, blamed entirely on spiralling agency spending.
Some trusts have spent up to £3,200 a shift for doctors.
Dr Sarah Wollaston, the former Commons health
select committee chairman, said: “I am really concerned about what we are
seeing – there is a domino effect here. The rates being paid make it harder and
harder for the NHS to fill permanent jobs. These agencies are leeching away
permanent staff from the NHS, and the sums being spent on them are frankly
eye-watering.
“We absolutely need to get a grip. When you’ve got senior figures at
agencies earning far more than the head of the NHS — this is public money and
we cannot go on like this, we cannot afford to keep paying these sums.”
Dr Peter Carter, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “It
is simply not sustainable for so much public money to be spent in this way.
The £1m home of Richard MacMillan (Eddie Mitchell)
“The NHS needs to wean itself off its over-reliance on short-term staffing
solutions by translating agency staff into permanent staff and holding on to
the staff it already has.”
• Agencies make millions from £120-an-hour doctors
• The NHS must maintain standards, or be held to account
Analysis of the accounts of 10 of the biggest agencies profiting from the
NHS show that their collective turnover rose 39 per cent between 2010 and 2013,
to £1.93 billion. All of the firms supply both the health service and
private sector.
Overall, companies involved in sourcing short-term doctors and nurses for
the NHS posted revenues of £7.7 billion between 2009 and 2013, with
recorded profits amounting to £84.5 million.
Accounts filed over the past four years by ICS, the biggest supplier of
temporary medical staff, show revenue grew from £196 million in 2011 to
£314 million in 2013.
Paul Pindar's
£9.5m
Richard MacMillan, ICS’s chief executive, owns a
home worth £1 million in Ringwood, Hampshire.
The firm is chaired by Paul Pindar, who previously
ran Capita Health and Wellbeing Limited, leaving last year. As chief executive
of Capita plc, the firm’s parent company, he earned £14,500 a week. His cars
have included a Mercedes S500 and an Aston Martin and he lives in a
£9.5 million house in
Capita’s
A Capita subsidiary, Team 24, which provides doctors and nursing staff,
reported profits of £4.7 million in 2013 on turnover of
£42.2 million. Thomas Richards, the director, owns a house worth
£1.3 million in Seal, in
Medacs, another firm, which claims to place more
locum doctors in the NHS than any other organisation, has posted profits of
£37 million since 2009, paying one of its directors £492,000 in 2013. The
company also provides health care services to the police and prison service.
Another company,
Healthcare Locums (HCL), another firm, reported gross profits amounting to
£17.1 million in 2013. Stephen Burke, its chief executive, owns a £2.4 million home in Hampshire.
HCL left the stock market in 2013 when it was taken over by Toscafund and Ares Capital Europe, following “serious
accounting irregularities” by its previous management.
The £1.3m
Mayday Healthcare, which promises locums “the best rates”, reported pre-tax
profits of £9.2 million in 2014, a rise from £6 million in 2010.
One director received £957,000 in 2013-14, and Charles Safapour,
its co-founder, owns a £1.3 million property near Caterham.
• Surge in cancelled NHS operations
• NHS spending: how temporary staff keep
the health service going
The firm is majority-owned by Kevin Coyle, who lives in a £3 million,
seven-bed room property in Hertfordshire.
A24 Group, founded by Penny Streeter, reported pre-tax profits of
£54 million in the past four years.
The success of Ms Streeter’s recruitment firm propelled her on to the Sunday
Times Rich List in 2007, and she is now said to be worth more than £60 million.
Julia Manning, chief executive of the think tank 2020 Health, said: “It will
be absolutely galling for NHS staff and patients to see the kind of luxurious
lifestyles that the health service is funding.
“These companies are able to exploit the difficulties the NHS is going
though because there simply hasn’t been enough attention paid to forward
planning and making sure we train enough staff.
“The NHS is guilty of a serious false economy in cutting back on staff only
to pay so much more to these agencies.”
Katherine Murphy, head of the Patients Association, said: “We continue to
bleed the NHS of scant resources in order to fund the lavish lifestyles of
owners of nursing agencies.”
A Capita spokesman said it provided support services to numerous NHS
organisations, the Department of Health and other public bodies. “The provision
of health and care staffing services to the NHS represents a very small
proportion of our total health related work,” he said.
• Letters: Free up junior doctors to reform wasteful NHS spending
on agency staff
• A&E departments so short-staffed four in 10 doctors are locums,
warns report
• Patients waiting longer for help amid nursing shortage
A Department of Health spokesman said: “As the Health Secretary said in
November, the NHS needs to cut the amount of money it spends on agency staff
and use money more efficiently – and this damning investigation by The
Telegraph shows exactly why.
“Since May 2010, we already have more than 23,000 extra clinical permanent
staff working in the NHS, including more than 9,100 extra doctors and more than
8,200 extra nurses.”
A spokesman for ICS said: “Flexibility to increase numbers of doctors,
allied health professionals and nurses, often at extremely short notice, is
critical to the NHS maintaining high standards of patient care around the
clock.
“ICS helps hospitals and NHS trusts to match highly specialist medical
professionals to the needs of patients at times when care demands are at their
highest.
“Pay is agreed with individual trusts and varies according to their work
requirements and the length of notice provided to us.”
Healthcare Locums, Medacs, Mayday Healthcare,