Health trusts in Bristol are paying up to £81 an hour for agency staff to cover shifts.

Figures released through the Freedom of Information Act show how much organisations paid temporary staff to fill positions between May and October 2008.

The most expensive hourly rate was £81.20 for a "senior position" at NHS South Gloucestershire from May to October, which would equate to an annual salary of £140,000.

NHS South Gloucestershire  would not release details of the position because they said it would identify the individual.

 

Elsewhere in the country health trusts were paying up to £100 more per hour to fill staffing gaps.

Whipps Cross University Hospitals NHS Trust said it paid £188 an hour for an anaesthetics medical consultant in June, August and September – equivalent to an annual salary of £365,625.

The Conservative Party, requested the figures from every health trust in the country and worked out its hourly rates to include agency fees, holiday pay and travel costs.

North Somerset Primary Care Trust paid £40.39 an hour to an agency communications manager in September and October.

A spokesman for the PCT said the cost of paying agency workers was not comparable with full-time staff due to the extra fees.

The temporary communications manager returned to the trust contracted on a lower hourly rate one-day a week following his initial agency stint while handing over to the new member of staff when she was appointed.

Richard Forshaw said: "It is important that we cover services, whether clinical or management, effectively but also cost effectively. These have to be short-term fixes because of the fees agencies are charging."

North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT), which runs Frenchay and Southmead Hospital, paid £75 an hour for a locum rheumatology consultant from May to October, while NHS Bristol paid £70.86 for a temporary prison nurse in May, June and August.

NBT spokeswoman Casey Palmer said appointing consultant rheumatologists was particularly difficult, because there are so few available.

She said: "There are occasions when the trust will be obliged to seek a locum doctor from a locum medical agency, when all other avenues to fill the appointment have been exhausted and the resulting outcome would seriously affect patient care.

"Before the trust places a booking with a locum agency it goes through a meticulous process of administration.

"Any suitable doctors who have registered their interest on the trust bank are contacted for their availability and the trust also places an advert in the British Medical Journal. If the vacancy cannot be filled, the trust would then go to an gency as a last

resort."

An NHS South Gloucestershire spokeswoman said: “This was a senior position and it was essential to recruit an individual with the specific skills required for this post to ensure the smooth running of the organisation.

“NHS South Gloucestershire has now recruited a full time employee to this post.”

At Weston Area Health Trust, an agency cardiology consultant cost £75 an hour.

Spokeswoman Caroline Thomas said: "The post of cardiology consultant is one which all trusts find challenging to recruit into and during this time we required the use of a locum consultant.

"We used a specialist professional recruitment agency to find the consultant and agency rates of pay are always higher than staff rates."

Almost £800 million was spent on agency staff in 2006/07 across the NHS.