Category Archives: healthcare recruitment agencies

Healthcare recruitment agencies that supply nurses or healthcare staff in general to the NHS, would not have been surprised by the latest data coming out from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

Their findings estimated that 56,000 jobs have been lost or are going to be lost across theUK, a figure that has doubled over the year. The reasons for these cuts are due to the £20 billion in efficiency savings that the NHS has to produce, something that is meant to be reinvested into the NHS, however RCN chief executive Dr Peter Carter claimed that there is no evidence of this.

The other point made by the RCN was that not only will there be cuts but a downgrading in Nursing roles, this will allow a reduction in salary for Nurses but still be the same role. This comment has been denied by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, who claimed to have no knowledge of roles being downgraded.

The overall view is that these cuts will be detrimental to the service provided by the NHS. It is unclear how these trusts expect to operate to the required standard and at the same time reduce costs drastically. I for one had hoped the reduction of costs would have come from much of the administration rather than frontline staff, however appreciate that it is difficult how the NHS can achieve this £20 billion cost saving.

Healthcare recruitment agencies were caught in the middle this week, when Unison were shocked to find out that agency spend at Doncaster NHS Trust had risen from £11.8 million to £13.1 million.

The figures published by the trust come in the midst of staff losses and staff restructuring to reduce overall spend, this news incensed Unison and they claim with the money being spent on temps you could in fact hire 12 full time nurses. However the trust has said that it is almost an impossible task, hospitals have to reduce spending and at the same time maintain their services, therefore it is a catch 22 and agency staff, offer that flexibility that permanent staff do not offer.

The trust did add that it has put initiatives into place to combat this recruitment short fall, this will take time but 3 consultants have already been hired on the back of these initiatives and slowly the NHS trust will become better set up for ad hoc and full time recruitment.

In my view, I appreciate the comments made by Unison but surely there can be no argument that in times of change there is a stage by stage process, firstly there has to be a reduction of spend i.e. job losses, then in the interim there needs to be locums to maintain the NHS services whilst the new structure is being created and finally a reduction of temps and more dependency on the new structure. We are of course at stage 2 and therefore dependant in the interim on Healthcare recruitment agencies.

Healthcare recruitment agencies are concerned that 2 NHS trusts are starting a trend by merging. NHS South West Essex and NHS South East Essex are to announce in the next few days that these trusts are to merge to save costs.

The merger could result in 150 job cuts and this is on top of the NHS South West Essex already making 224 redundancies, with losses of more than £50 million means that trusts have to look at different ways of reducing these huge costs and merging is sometimes the solution.

Unison spokesman Nick Bradley said that this merger is extremely worrying and could have a detrimental effect on the health service, we will have a period when 500 or so healthcare workers will be looking to fill but a few jobs and the remainder will be left unemployed.

The Trusts replied by saying it is not there fault and said it is the sanctions imposed on them by the government that has led to this decision. However they will discuss with trade unions how to best implement these changes.

Healthcare recruitment agencies are seeing many frontline services being reduced and having trusts merge means that this can only further reduce staff and this of course is a concern.

Healthcare recruitment agencies have had much to digest over the past few days, with most of the news over the weekend about the crumbling state of the NHS.

So far there have been reports of job cuts, people left untreated and many A&E and Maternity Units being closed. Not a pretty picture. The promises of the coalition government were that frontline services will not be affected and the main areas of savings will come from a reduction of administration. However the stark reality of the situation is mainly trusts are cutting frontline staff daily.

The royal college of Nursing has warned that 27,000 nurses potentially could lose their jobs. The news also came from South West London hospitals that there could be as many as 1,000 job loses and this could include doctors, nurses and technical staff. This is a slight embarrassment from the coalition point of view as some of these hospitals such as Kingston hospitals were used in the election by Nic Clegg as stating “Every vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote to keep our NHS Safe”.

Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said that this is putting lives at stake and this is reminiscent of the devastating reforms Margaret Thatcher put into place.

My view on this sensitive matter is that there is obviously a reason why these cuts are happening and that the people have only a small understanding of the state of the economy. I suggest that the average person does not know if we are tackling this national debt and if so how effective we are being, I think there has to be much more transparency of what is going on and stories that such as this one only demonstrate that false promises have been broken.

Large healthcare recruitment agencies might have heard by now that NHS Professionals, the state owned recruitment agency is currently looking for a buyer.

The controversial move to privatise the labour government set up to try and reduce overcharging from the private sector, has been loss making till now. It made a 6.2 million loss in 2009-2010 and overall has losses of £100 million.

NHS Professionals supplies 50,000 nurses for shifts nationwide and Neil Lloyd, chief executive says that the Health Trust are doing more and more outsourcing of their staffing needs. This kind of attitude benefits us and other agencies that claim they can lower costs per shifts by moving their staff banks to us.

The sale of NHS Professionals will be published in full through the European Union tender process.

I think this shows the naivity of the last government, I can’t understand how they thought a state owned recruitment agency would work. In fact it failed miserable even accumulating losses of up to £100 million. I would have suggested a better route to have taken is a regulation and tendering process of healthcare recruitment agencies in general and overlook how these agencies operate, which as far as I understand are now done through buying solutions who maintain the NHS staffing contract. This seems to be a better route to take because competition exists and this drives the price lower.