Middlemen are charging the NHS half a billion kilos a yr in charges for company workers.
The large premium, which is on high of sky-high wages paid to locum medical doctors and nurses, may be revealed at this time by a Mail audit. Campaigners known as for motion to cease companies ‘gorging themselves on NHS cash’.
Workers at one company have been rewarded for a worthwhile yr with a free journey to the Caribbean, the place they have been pictured sipping cocktails in a lodge.
Recruitment companies have boasted of document earnings attributable to elevated demand throughout and because the pandemic.
Middlemen are charging the NHS half a billion kilos a yr in charges for company workers
One director alone pocketed greater than £500,000 final yr.
The NHS is dealing with its best staffing disaster ever, with shortfalls of 12,000 hospital medical doctors and greater than 50,000 nurses and midwives.
Locums may be known as upon to fill any gap within the rota, from a single day to a month, and even longer.
Sipping cocktails as earnings soared
As frontline NHS workers risked their lives in Covid wards, these ‘elite’ staff at a high locum company sipped cocktails on an all-expenses-paid journey to the Caribbean.
Campaigners have claimed this image lays naked the ‘lavish practices’ that ‘rub salt into the wound’ of well being employees who sacrificed all the things. Cook dinner Recruitment Group made a £1.1million revenue final yr thanks, partly, to hiring out locum medics to greater than 200 UK hospitals.
These sums could clarify the way it can afford to ship members of its ‘Elite Membership’ on annual luxurious week-long holidays.
Administrators David Cook dinner, his brother Glenn and spouse Jenny have overseen document earnings because the begin of the pandemic as demand for employees rocketed. They pocketed £425,000 between them final yr.
Cook dinner Recruitment advised the Mail it supplied locum workers ‘at charges that are laid down by the NHS’, however accepted these caps have been damaged ‘once in a while’ below distinctive circumstances.
Free journey: Cook dinner Recruitment took its ‘Elite Membership’ – together with administrators David and Jenny Cook dinner, circled – to the Caribbean
The NHS in England spent £3billion of its whole £136billion finances on company workers this yr to plug gaps.
The Mail audit examines the accounts of ten main companies. It exhibits that they maintain round 20 per cent of the sum they cost to the well being service, after overlaying the wages of the locum workers.
That equated final yr to £600million that would have been used for coaching.
Theresa Villiers, a Tory former Cupboard minister, mentioned: ‘That is stunning and it has to cease. These funds ought to be dedicated to affected person care.
‘Each the NHS and the Authorities have to get a grip on this and get these prices down. That is ripping off the taxpayer and the NHS.’
A supply near Well being Secretary Steve Barclay mentioned the Authorities would act to chop wasteful spending.
The insider added: ‘Whereas we’re recruiting hundreds extra NHS medical doctors and nurses, non permanent workers are wanted to assist clear the therapy backlog left by the Covid pandemic.
‘We do want to chop wasteful spending and guarantee each penny of NHS money goes into caring for sufferers and never extreme earnings for recruitment consultants. We’ll act to deal with any abuse of the present preparations.’
The audit additionally revealed that revenue for the company trade might have reached as much as £100million, based mostly on common margins of simply over 3 per cent.
Cook dinner Recruitment Group, which runs Nationwide Locums, Locum Individuals and The GP Workforce, made £1.1million in revenue final yr, thanks, partly, to NHS money from greater than 200 UK hospitals.
Nationwide Locums describes itself as ‘a number one provider’ of medical doctors and nurses to the NHS and personal hospitals and noticed its turnover improve by 14.4 per cent final yr to £20million, all of which was derived from charges.
Locum Individuals gives medical doctors a £250 reward in the event that they refer a good friend who then works 250 hours, with no restrict on the variety of colleagues they will refer.
A GP position in east London with Nationwide Locums provided £950 for an on-call shift that will equate to £247,000 a yr.
An NHS GP normally earns between £65,000 and £98,000.
ID Medical Group Holdings – the mum or dad firm of company ID Medical – made a revenue of round £3million, a part of which was derived from the charges it expenses the NHS to rent locums.
Its web site boasts of ‘1.6m+ locum hours crammed every year, typically extra’ and claims to have 95 per cent of trusts ‘often working with us’. It says it gives round 2,000 ‘roles for medical doctors per 30 days, on common’.
A job provided by ID Medical final week provided £40 an hour for a radiologist – a every year wage of £83,200. However an NHS radiology job marketed in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, provided a wage of between £33,706 and £40,558.
Cook dinner Recruitment and ID Medical Group Holdings recorded gross margins of 20 per cent and 19 per cent respectively.
Physician’s enterprise pays off
At 83, Dr Mo Sacoor exhibits no indicators of slowing up.
The self-described ‘loopy heart specialist and serial entrepreneur from Mozambique’ based locum company ID Medical in 2002 – and final yr it turned over greater than £100million.
Its mum or dad firm, ID Medical Group Holdings, made a revenue of round £3million, a part of which was derived from the charges it expenses the NHS to rent locums on its books.
ID Medical declined to remark.
Founder: Dr Mo Sacoor
An extra agency, Medsol Healthcare, which has equipped locums to the NHS for greater than a decade, boasted of a ‘document first quarter attributable to elevated demand from the NHS’ in 2021.
The agency posted £1.8million revenue at a margin of 8 per cent. Medsol didn’t reply to a request for remark.
In an try to deliver down eye-watering company pay offers of £400,000 a yr or extra, the NHS introduced in a wage cap of 150 per cent of ordinary pay in 2015, however trusts could make exceptions if obligatory.
Dennis Reed, of marketing campaign group Silver Voices, mentioned: ‘The Mail has recognized a scandalous scenario. These companies are gorging themselves on NHS cash.’
Labour well being spokesman Wes Streeting mentioned the failure to coach sufficient medical doctors had left the well being service ‘on the mercy of recruitment companies’.
He added: ‘Hundreds of thousands of kilos of taxpayers’ cash goes straight into the pockets of recruitment executives, whereas sufferers discover it unattainable to get a GP appointment or an operation.’
Neil Carberry of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, which represents firms supplying non permanent workers, mentioned they saved the NHS ‘on its ft’.
He mentioned the margins companies take cowl ‘issues like nationwide insurance coverage and the protection checks companies should do to ensure sufferers are saved secure’.
He added: ‘The actual drawback is that the NHS staffing frameworks will not be match for objective – an unwillingness from the Authorities to pay nurses and medical doctors what they’re price has led to increasingly more shifts being rejected, and extra high-cost, last-minute shifts being wanted.’
David Cook dinner, of the Cook dinner Recruitment Group, mentioned: ‘With out firms resembling ours, the NHS wouldn’t be capable to operate.’
He mentioned the agency supplied workers ‘at charges laid down by the NHS’, including: ‘We’re happy with the funding we make in our group.’
ID Medical made no remark.
