markg wrote:
ApplePieOfDestiny wrote:
I'm not sure if the situation is the same now, but ten years ago agencies were a rip off perpetrated be the nurses themselves.
Ward sister draws up the rota for the ward, asks all staff for their preferred hours. Staff all ask for (non unsocial hours pay) hours, so generally 9-5 Monday to Friday. Sister then requests cover for nights and weekends. By agreement a few of them come forward but by no means enough, everyone claiming unavailability. Ward is left fully staffed at daytimes and a few odd shifts. Sister goes to Agency for bank staff.
The bank staff are selected by the sister from available pool, which just so happens to be the same staff on the ward which claimed not to be available for the normal rota. The agency rate to staff is c25% higher than the normal unsocial rate, and about 50% higher cost to the hospital.
I know this as about 12 years ago the ward in question was used as a trial to break this cheating apart with forced hours. To help her make balanced decisions I wrote the rota for my then gfs ward using anonymised data. It did work but coincidentally I had a client that wrote software that did the same thing on a hospitalwide basis. The NHS wouldn't buy it or enforce use due to 'cost' - said cost for the trust in question was something like 5% of the estimated excess agency fees paid (some bank staff will always be required but not as much)
That sounds very unusual to say the least. Are you talking about bank staff or agency staff? You seem to be using the terms interchangeably. The nurse bank is run internally and pays the usual rates. Staff can make themselves available to work extra hours or some staff work exclusively on the bank on a sort of zero hours arrangement. Trust employees don't moonlight for their own employers via agencies. This has been the situation for as long as I can remember.
That interchanging is unintentional as I'm mixing terms. However at the trust in question the bank was operated by an external agency, which also operated the agency staff. No-one volunteered for the bank and went straight to the agency, who used the same office and the same phone line for the first c5 years that I knew my girlfriend. (this changed with the changes the trust tried to, partially successfully enforce). *
The situation was so ridiculous that my girlfriend, who hated Christmas, booked Christmas day off every year then did a long Christmas day shift, as agency, on the same ward. Even if she was put on as a staff nurse and paid as such she made double the money.
*Incidentally, they situation at that trust is now better but only slightly. I trained with the FD for the same hospital and she tears her hair out on a monthly basis at salary overshoots on understaffed units