Suspensions ‘costing NHS £40 million’
The NHS is spending up to £40 million pounds every year on suspensions, a new report claims.
A survey by the National Audit Office found over 1,000 clinical staff were suspended on full pay for at least a month last year.
However, the NAO claims that many were needlessly suspended with 40 per cent returning to work months, or even years later.
One in five of those suspended were doctors and 53 per cent were nurses or midwives. Trusts spent £11 million paying workers to stay at home and another £29 million on legal bills. Doctors were suspended for an average of 11 months.
The suspensions procedure is designed to protect patients, but the NAO suggests that some trusts suspend staff for other, more questionable, reasons, such as personality clashes with managers.
The NAO called for the Department of Health to issue new guidelines to trusts on how to deal with suspended staff and said the NHS could save £14 million by dealing with all cases in six months.
Sir John Bourn, NAO comptroller and auditor general said: “This represents a serious waste of resources for the NHS and can harm the career and even personal well-being of the accused clinicians themselves.”
Alastair Henderson of the NHS Confederation, which represents health service managers, said: “We want to see a reduction in the number and length of suspensions and fully support the proposed new framework between the government and the BMA to achieve this.”
