Agency Nurses & Locum Drs: Shifts Worked & Spend 2015-25

Reference: 24-25560

Date response sent: 14/01/2025

Details of enquiry

Between 2015 and 2025

1. How many nurse shifts were filled by agency staff? = please specify by month, per agency and department (I.e. ward, theatre etc)
2. How many doctor shifts were filled by agency staff? = please specify by month, per agency and department (I.e. ward, theatre etc)
3. What was the total trust spend per a month for each agency supplier?

Response sent

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is a small specialist NHS mental health trust with a focus on training and education, as well as providing a full range of mental health services and therapies for children and their families, young people and adults.

We provide outpatient, and mainly psychological services via talking therapies. We do not provide acute services, nor inpatient patient services, nor detention facilities, and do not have an A&E department

Your request for information about shifts worked is not applicable to our Trust as our staff do not work shifts and we offer outpatient services at weekday daytimes only. This is reflected in our answers below.

1. How many nurse shifts were filled by agency staff? = please specify by month, per agency and department (I.e. ward, theatre etc)

Our staff do not work shifts.  Agency nurses work days and we do not separately record the number of days worked, as we are generally invoiced in weeks or months.

2. How many doctor shifts were filled by agency staff? = please specify by month, per agency and department (I.e. ward, theatre etc)

Our staff do not work shifts.  Agency doctors work days and we do not separately record the number of days worked, as we are generally invoiced in weeks or months.

We occasionally hire locum doctors from an agency, as part of a service we offer to supplement certain local acute hospitals’ mental health services, where we provide resident doctors (previously known as junior doctors) to cover shifts  when there is a gap in shift we are committed to fill, but cannot otherwise do so, for which we are reimbursed in full by the relevant local acute Trust.  Again, we do not keep records of the number of these shifts worked, as their net hire costs are nil to our us, due to full reimbursement to us, by the acute hospital.

3. What was the total trust spend per a month for each agency supplier?

We do not hold our data by month paid, so the following list shows the invoice dates for each agency payment made.

We have pasted below, and in the attached csv files the data we have been able to obtain from our 3^rd party bought ledger partner, as we do not process invoice in-house.

1. Agency Doctors

In the attached csv file, we have provided the sums paid against invoices for Agency doctors hired via Pulse Healthcare for the period 2015 and 2018 to 2025.  We do not hold documentation showing hiring of doctors from other sources, as our Finance Department has undergone quite a few staff changes in the period since 2015

For our own ease of reference, as well as yours, these attached tables have also been pasted below for easier viewing.

1. Agency Nurses

In the attached csv file, we have provided the sums paid against invoices for Agency Nurses via Pertemps Medical Professional for the period 2023 to 2025. We have also hired agency nurses from Reed Specialist Recruitment Ltd, however at 2,263 invoices for the period  2015 to 2025 we are unable to distinguish those which relate to agency nurses, as neither financial coding nor invoices distinguish the posts held.

For our own ease of reference, as well as for yours, these attached tables have also been pasted below for easier viewing.