Figures reveal out-of-hours payments to NHS consultants
Some senior doctors in the NHS are receiving up to £160,000 a year in overtime pay, new figures have revealed.
The additional earnings for out-of-hours patient care has taken annual pay for a number of consultants to more than £250,000, according to information obtained by the Sunday Times.
The maximum basic salary for an NHS consultant is currently around £101,000.
The largest overtime payment recorded in 2011-12 was £161,750 for a senior doctor at Lancashire Teaching Hospital NHS Trust, who was paid a maximum rate of £142.86 for 1,294 hours overtime.
At Stockport NHS Foundation Trust, another consultant was paid an average hourly rate of £272.70 for 584 hours, totalling £159,256, according to the newspaper’s freedom of information request.
The statistics were branded “outrageous and totally unacceptable” by the chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Margaret Hodge. “We need to see more consultants working out of hours but not on these absurd and excessive rates,” she said.
The NHS employs about 40,000 consultants, whose pay bill totalled £5.6 billion in 2011-12. This figure included ‘clinical excellence’ awards which were worth £500 million.
The latest figures have stoked the debate over staff availability and working practices in the NHS. In July, the Public Accounts Committee attacked the current framework for consultants’ hours and pay, because they could refuse to work past 7pm and on weekends.
The committee recommended that flexibility be built into future contracts to allow for round-the-clock patient care and limit the scope for excessive overtime payments.
NHS Employers has confirmed that it is seeking to renegotiate the current ‘consultant contract’ which was last agreed in 2003.
The British Medical Association will decide this week whether to enter into these negotiations, but the body has already criticised proposals for a “24/7 Tesco NHS” as unfeasible.
A number of NHS trusts have fewer than 5 per cent of their most senior clinical staff on duty on Saturdays and Sundays – the period when death rates increase by up to 20 per cent in some hospitals. Many trusts rely on temporary cover, paying up to £2,700 per day for the most senior staff, the newspaper reported.
Lancashire Teaching Hospital NHS Trust told the paper that its large overtime payment to one consultant was due to the combination of a high level of referrals and a shortage of locums, and it had since reviewed its service.
Stockport NHS Foundation Trust added that its large overtime payment was due to a staff shortage, which meant that “we asked our consultant to see additional patients at a separate payment rate”.