NHS Improvement to tighten controls on agency spend

NHS Improvement has declared it will ‘disrupt' agency spend and impose tighter controls on temporary staffing agencies in a bid to reduce its financial strain on the health service, which is on track to hit £4 billion this year.

Speaking at a Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) meeting this week, NHS Improvement boss Jim Mackey claimed the organisation would further disrupt the market by ‘effectively re-procuring for new agency and locum contracts to have a competitive fee process’.

He said: “More importantly, those contracts will give us, NHS Improvement, the ability to set the terms and conditions”.

However, both Mackey and NHS England chief Simon Stevens were criticised by MPs who considered the move to be a potentially illegal method of controlling agency spend. They claimed that doctors and nurses turned to expensive agencies because the terms and conditions are better than those offered by the NHS, and that blocking would be ‘using monopoly power to very seriously impact the market’.

In particular, MP Stephen Phillips specified the move would constitute to ‘an abusive, dominant position under articles 81 and 82’ of the European Commission.

Phillips added: “You understand that given substantial profits on the part of a number of organisations are at stake here – it probably isn’t going to strengthen our hand to go into great detail about the legal preparations that have been taken.”

“The collective commitment we all have made is to seek to increase 5,000 doctors in general practice by 2020. We intend to put forward a big support package for primary care next month, in February, that will lay out in considerable detail how, together with the Royal College of GPs and the BMA, we’re going to take action on that front.”