In lieu of recent reports claiming the NHS is spending too much on locums and paying GPs excessively for working only weekends, the NHS Grampian has spoken out and defended the NHS’ spending.
Between 2013 and 2014, the NHS paid out £6, 618, 431 to locums with the biggest area of spending being specialist eye care, an example of this being the £629, 019 spent on consultant opthalmology services.
NHS paid out most to specialist eye care
These high expenses were closely followed by excessive bills from paediatric medicine, neo-natal, anaesthetics, radiology, obstetrics and oncology.
An NHS Grampian spokesperson has defended these billings by explaining, “Some areas of care are extremely specialised and recruitment to these posts can take time.
“Using locum doctors ensures that we can continue to provide a service to our patients while filling essential medical vacancies.”
This spending scandal comes after a string of articles depicting the NHS as struggling to cope with the healthcare needs of the public and garnering excessive debt.