Health board in North Wales has spent more than ?50m on locums

[Northerner]

NORTH Wales?s cash-strapped health board has spent more than ?50 million on locums.

The Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board has spent that sum on hiring more than 2,500 stand-in doctors and medics since 2010.

The locums have been used to plug gaps in areas where health bosses have had difficulties in recruiting specialists to come to North Wales, such as maternity psychiatry and paediatrics.

http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/health/health-board-north-wales-spent-5785838

 

[LeeLee]

That's a difficult one to resolve. Consultant recruitment, particularly to certain specialties, can be very difficult and can take several rounds of the advertisement/interview process. Meanwhile, the services have to continue and it is essential to have a suitably trained senior medic in the department. The alternative would be to close the service and send patients to other units, putting pressure on them... and what do you do with the staff that are left in the closed department? Make them redundant, costing even more money? Rock and hard place.