EXCLUSIVE Private agencies rake in bumper profits from hiring out locum doctors to hospitals - which cost the NHS over £500million a year By MILES DILWORTH Published: 22:00, 17 November 2024 | Updated: 22:06, 17 November 2024 e-mail View comments The NHS is being 'ripped off' by private agencies raking in bumper profits from hiring out doctors to hospitals, the Mail can reveal. Fuelled by a chronic recruitment crisis, health chiefs are being bounced into handing over an estimated £500 million a year to fill empty locum shifts with agency staff. One agency director alone paid themselves more than £1million last year as bosses pocket around 20 per cent of the fee paid by the struggling health service.
It has become so lucrative – profits in the sector have soared six-fold in just three years – that junior doctors are being encouraged by their peers on social media to jump ship into the private sector. Agency bosses desperate to recruit more staff are offering incentives, including iPads, spa breaks and furniture vouchers worth £1,000. Some agencies are trying to poach doctors by offering £5,000 Rolex watches and luxury holidays for referrals.
It comes after Health Secretary Wes Streeting vowed to ban the NHS from spending 'eye-watering sums' on temporary staff to plug 113,000 vacancies. Campaigners said the 'rip-off' firms should be 'run out of town'. An unnamed ID Medical Group director was paid £1,134,017 in 2023.
Dr Mo Sacoor (pictured) founded the firm in 2002 . P.
