Overtime pay rises by more than a third

A freedom of information request by the BBC has discovered that spending on high-cost overtime has risen by more than a third in the past two years.

Responses from 114 NHS trusts and boards showed that spending on high-cost overtime rose by a third to £168 million last year, up from £125 million in 2013-14.

UK hospitals are becoming increasingly reliant on premium overtime pay to allow consultants to do the necessary extra work that a staff shortage is creating.

Hospitals have individual responsibility to negotiate payments, with the BBC stating that £600 in overtime for a four-hour shift is commonplace, although there are examples of lower rates and indeed higher rates as well. The request only examined overtime pay paid at a higher rate than normal pay.

According to the BBS, one unnamed consultant at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust made an extra £375,000 last year on top of their salary. Additionally, two in three trusts paid at least one consultant more than £50,000 last year, with one in four paying £100,000 or more.

The most likely recipients of high rate overtime pay were surgeons, radiologists, urologists, anaesthetists and gastroenterologists.

Professor Mark Pugh, medical director of Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “There is an acute shortage of consultants for some of these specialities and as we have not been able to source the additional staff we need as demand has risen, we have paid overtime to the existing workforce to deliver extra clinics so that patients can be seen and treated as quickly as possible.”

Andrew Foster, chief executive of Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust, which stopped paying premium overtime rates in 2010, said: "I don't think it is very defensible to pay a huge premium to one group of staff and not to other groups of staff. No other member of staff gets triple pay for doing extra shifts."

Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers, said: “There is a variety of reasons why we are seeing the costs rising – patient demand and supply of doctors are two important factors. Clearly the information obtained challenges NHS organisations and teams about what arrangements they have in place. What it doesn’t show however is that there are a greater number of doctors doing overtime within the terms of their contract and being paid in line with that or not being paid at all.

"The BMA and the NHS have accepted that the contract needs to be improved in relation to how we plan and reward work at evenings, nights and weekends. When our negotiations conclude, I am hopeful that this will provide a more standardised basis for new arrangements going forward.”