SOUTH West Acute Hospital has spent over £4 million in the last year on hiring temporary staff across a range of departments, including surgery and medicine.

Health Minister Simon Hamilton has confirmed that the costs of paying locum staff in the Western Health and Social Care Trust will more than triple over the next year amounting to £13 million.

Furthermore, an internal complaint, filed by nursing and medical staff back in January, outlined their concerns that “prolonged periods” in the emergency department was “unsafe” and pointed to the Trust’s “inability” to recruit staff.

A document, obtained by The Impartial Reporter’s Your Right to Know through a Freedom of Information Request, shows correspondence by a doctor to the Trust referring to “workforce challenges” explaining that posts in the emergency department [and other departments] are filled by locum medical and bank nursing staff of “variable experience.”

The Western Trust is part of a regional contract with agreed rates for agency medical locums.

Figures, obtained by Your Right to Know, show that 133 agency locums worked at the hospital in the last year, covering all grades of doctors, junior doctors through to consultants. The rates paid to agencies for the supply of these doctors varied from £50.09 per hour for junior doctors through to £112 per hour for a consultant.

The medical expenditure from January 2015 until December 2015 related to agency medical doctors, who are not on the Western Trust payroll. The areas and associated costs were as follows: * Gynaecology/Obstetrics - £551,109 * Paediatrics - £546,274 * Elderly - £101,237 * Diagnostic services - £83,217 * Unscheduled care - £1,307,410 * Medicine - £621,108 * Surgery - £1,012,483 Total: £4,222,838 Meanwhile, the Western Trust spent £405,427 in the last year on other agency workers. Between January 1, 2015 and January 1, 2016, agency nursing staff and healthcare workers worked 1849 shifts, while agency staff nurses worked 1090 shifts.

The Western Trust has a regional Agency Workers Framework agreement for the contracting of agency staff and only in certain circumstances to cover short term vacancies, one month initially, such as sick leave and secondments, does the Trust contract with agencies for the provision of staff.

Minister Hamilton told Sinn Fein’s Phil Flanagan that the Department of Health will work closely with Trust management to support initiatives, both monetary and non-monetary, that will facilitate the recruitment and encourage the retention of medical staff, including six new doctors for the hospital.

Mr. Flanagan has described the significant spend as “a serious problem. We need to see an expansion of services at this hospital through a targeted campaign of attracting patients from across the border, which would allow for a greater population catchment and the delivery of a wider range of services in a sustainable manner,” he said.

The SDLP’s Richie McPhillips has called for an independent Stormont inquiry into the financial management of the Western Trust.

“In my view what we have on our hands is a potential scandal that can only be properly examined by the Public Accounts Committee once the new Assembly is in place,” he said.

Mr. McPhillips, an Erne East councillor, described the £4 million bill for hiring staff “as an appalling indictment of the system of financial controls put in place by the Trust. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the most appropriate description of the present situation is financial abuse of the most outrageous kind. These statistics uncovered by The Impartial Reporter are truly shocking. The combination of the Trust management with the backing of the Department of Health have been acting in a way that suggests they have a private license to pour cash down the drain.

“That is why nothing less than the most rigorous legal examination of the depth and scope of the financial management structures in place will be acceptable,” he told Your Right to Know.

The Ulster Unionist’s Alastair Patterson said the figures show “a deepening workforce crisis in the local health service.”

“I am shocked to hear this level of money being spent on the hiring of locum doctors. This is a crazy amount of money. Surely it would go a long way in hiring doctors and nurses on a full-time basis?

“The Western Trust is becoming increasingly reliant on bank doctors and nurses to cover the major gaps that are developing across the entire workforce. This is neither safe nor is it value for public money,” he said.

Mr. Patterson said he is “deeply concerned” to learn that staff working in the hospital have expressed concerns about the emergency department being “unsafe.”

The Democratic Unionist Party’s Maurice Morrow has refuted the suggestion that spending millions on hiring temporary staff at South West Acute Hospital is wasting money.

Lord Morrow said: “During this Assembly term staff numbers across the Health and Social Care sector have increased with 1,191 more nurses and midwives, 523 more allied health professionals, 275 more consultants and 73 more paramedics and emergency medical technicians. The Minister also recently announced an increase in training places for doctors.

“While this action will have benefits right across the Health Service the process is underway to recruit consultants and nurses for the South West Acute Hospital. While spending money on locum doctors is not ideal, it is not ‘wasted’.”

In response, the Western Trust said it is “not immune” from national and regional medical shortages in many hospital specialties.

A spokeswoman said: “The Western Trust does however experience particular challenges recruiting medical staff due to its geographical location. Vacancies mostly occur in middle grade medical posts within the specialties of surgery, pediatrics and emergency care. These unique challenges result in agency and locum medical staff having to be used to maintain safe services and as a result the Western Trust spent approximately £12.5m on agency and locum doctors across its hospitals and community services in 2015/16.

"Delivering safe, high quality services as cost effectively as possible remains a clear commitment of the Trust. The Trust relentlessly pursues every opportunity to secure medical staff for hard to fill vacancies. Whilst the Trust strives to reduce expenditure on agency and locum staff, it will not achieve this at the expense of compromising safety. Recognising the scale of challenges associated with medical recruitment, the Trust continues to pursue proactively all recruitment routes available,” she said.