EAST Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust is set to pay out its biggest ever annual bill for temporary workers, dwarfing the £14 million spent two years ago.

The huge bill of £24 million for agency staff at the Royal Blackburn and Burnley General hospitals for this financial year was necessary to ensure patient safety, bosses have said.

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It comes after an unprecedented surge in patients seeking emergency and urgent care this winter, with more than 600 daily attendances at times, which has forced the trust to draft in temporary workers to help ensure beds are adequately staffed.

Although the bill has sparked some concern about the trust’s finances, chief executive Kevin McGee said he would ‘never compromise’ on patient safety in order to balance the books.

He said there had been some ‘historic’ issues with some hospitals concentrating too much on the ‘business side’ and said: “Patient safety is our objective first and foremost and we wouldn’t want to go down a road where that wasn’t a priority.”

The trust has tried to reduce its temporary staffing bill for many years, due to concerns about a lesser standard of care and the high costs involved in using external agencies, which make profits from their fees.

On an hourly basis, agency nurses cost the trust about £30-an-hour, which is nearly three times more than a permanent worker, while a senior doctor costs up to £120 per hour, which equates to nearly £1,500 for a 12-hour shift.

The trust has received about £5 million in extra funding this year to cover its ‘winter pressures’, so while Mr McGee acknowledged the bill was ‘large’, he said it was adequately funded. Last year the trust spent £22million on temporary staff.

He added: “There has been a national problem over the last few years with a shortage of nurses and some medical staff, and supply and demand means the fees have gone up as all organisations are trying to attract staff.

“We would argue that although the bill is higher than we’d like, it’s actually not a bad way of managing the workforce because we don’t need that number of staff all the time. So some use of temporary staff is helpful and positive.”

Part of the overall bill is for the trust’s ‘bank’ workforce, which acts as in-house temp agency to avoid the large fees.

When the trust was placed in special measures in 2013, it was severely criticised for its staff shortages and failing to fill vacant positions. There have been major efforts in the last year to address this, with the clinical workforce increasing by more than 250, but there are still some vacancies in key areas.

Russ McLean, chairman of the Pennine Lancashire Patient Voices Group, said: “This is a hell of a lot of money but it does seem to be a national issue where hospitals are struggling to recruit, because there is less desire for people to come into the health service.

“You have to feel a certain sympathy for the trust because they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, and since coming out of special measures they do seem to be more focussed on patient safety and continuity of care, rather than the financial side of things.”

The latest national figures showed the NHS spent £2.1 billion on agency staff in 2012/13, which increased to £2.6 billion last year.

Dr David Wrigley, who represents Lancashire doctors in the British Medical Association, said: “There are numerous factors here, but the fact that hospitals are struggling to recruit permanent staff shows a lack of workforce planning for the NHS.

“We have advised the government year-on-year to plan ahead but the warnings have gone unheeded.”

The Department of Health has argued the Stafford Hospital scandal, in which hundreds of patients may have died unnecessarily, had forced hospitals to hire extra nurses and meet safe staffing levels. The government is helping the NHS use its workforce more efficiently and reduce long-term reliance on agency workers, a spokesman said.

East Lancashire’s hospitals have an annual turnover of about £420 million, and the temporary staffing costs represent about eight per cent of the annual pay bill.

At its last board meeting, it was forecasting a ‘best case scenario’ of a £500,000 surplus at the end of this financial year, but the worst case scenario was a £2.5m deficit.