| answer text |
<p>The Department recognises that staff shortages can mean trusts are required to
recruit temporary staff through agencies to maintain safe staffing levels. Whilst
a certain degree of temporary staffing is desirable to efficiently manage variable
demand, engaging these staff through recruitment agencies is expensive, meaning trusts
cannot always secure value for money.</p><p> </p><p>To manage this cost, we are working
with NHS Improvement to implement a number of measures to reduce agency expenditure
and to support trusts to develop their own in-house staff banks, whereby individuals
directly employed by the National Health Service can be deployed to fill a temporary
shift, avoiding agency commission and the premium often charged by agencies. As a
result of this work, total agency expenditure across NHS trusts in England has fallen
from a peak of £3.6 billion in 2015/16 to £2.4 billion in 2017/18 – a £1.2 billion
reduction.</p><p> </p><p>The NHS Improvement Agency Programme is committed to further
reducing agency spend by monitoring trusts’ compliance with the Agency Rules and supporting
them to develop their in-house banks in a way that makes better use of workforce deployment
technology, such as e-rostering and acuity modelling.</p>
|
|
