Health secretary says agency staff is not the way forward
EMPLOYING huge numbers of agency staff in the NHS is not sustainable, the health secretary has admitted.
Jeremy Hunt’s comments to BBC Radio 5 Live come amid the news that Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, which runs community services in Hampshire, spent £14.5m last year on agency staff – double the amount from two years previously.
Mr Hunt said: ‘We are going to employ more staff.
‘As a short-term measure they employed a lot of agency staff to get staff in quickly. But that’s not sustainable in the long-run and that’s why we have to tackle these deficits.’