The government is about to set up a nursing supply agency inside the NHS to provide tens of thousands of staff with opportunities for overtime or part time working to suit their family responsibilities. Tony Blair will today announce the founding of NHS Professionals to compete with private agencies that cost the health service £361m last year.
The organisation will start with an experimental scheme for placing nurses, midwives and health visitors in London, Essex, Bristol and Birmingham, the areas of greatest staff shortages. It is expected to develop nationwide next year and extend to doctors and other health professionals.
Earlier this week the government signed a deal to recruit up to 5,000 nurses from Spain to relieve shortages in English hospitals, pending the recruitment and training of 20,000 extra nurses envisaged in the NHS plan. But ministers think a more effective short-term solution can be found by helping the NHS's existing workforce to work when they want and where they want.
A Department of Health source said too many nurses were forced by inflexible rostering to quit the NHS and work for private agencies that were less well regulated and charged commission for placing the same staff back with the NHS. Under the new scheme, nurses can ask NHS Professionals to find them working hours that suit their lifestyles and earnings needs.
The new organisation - based on a successful experiment in west Yorkshire - will offer holiday pay, pension entitlements and compensation to temporary staff if shifts are offered but later cancelled.
"Crucially it will allow us to maintain and update the professional skills that these nurses have. This will provide a guarantee of quality for nurses working on short term or irregular contracts for the NHS," the source said.
In 1996-97 the government spent £191.5m on agency nurses, midwives and health visitors working for the NHS in England. Last year this increased to £361.5m and the audit commission has forecast a further steep rise this year.
The Royal College of Nursing estimates that at least a fifth of Britain's 300,000 nurses work overtime - either through private agencies or nursing "banks" run by individual NHS trusts.
A spokeswoman welcomed the plan. "This reflects just how deep the shortages are, but the NHS agency should drive up standards and that is good news for nurses and patients," she said.
Mr Blair will launch the plan at a conference of chief nursing officers in Brighton. He is expected to blame cuts in nurse training between 1992 and 1995 for the shortages.
