82% of that money in the first half of 2018-2019 was spent specifically on acquiring cover for vacant positions. 8% was spent on “additional activity” and 6% of the agency staff spending was used on covering sickness absence.

 

In a report, the Wales Auditor General warned:

 

“Staff working on a temporary basis generally cost more for a shift than a person of the same grade who has a substantive contract.”

“Staff supplied by agencies tend to be the most costly source of temporary staff.”

 

NHS Wales is trying to reduce this reliance on expensive agency staff, but they have only recently begun to examine the individual reasons behind each choice.

 

Auditor general Adrian Crompton said: “I hope [this report] will be used by a wide range of people and professionals in Wales, along with the data tool we have produced, to help NHS Wales continue to bring down and control these costs at a time of significant financial pressure.”

 

Source: Insider Media Wales

 

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As well as being an extra expense for NHS Wales, using agency staff also puts the trusts more at risk of losing money to wage fraud, or simply to errors in reporting hours. 

 

This is because agency healthcare staff are very likely to still use paper timesheets to report their working hours back to the agencies. Depending on the agency, these may not even be checked by their NHS supervisor, which is obviously a huge risk for fraudulent responses.

 

Even when supervisors do check the hours on the timesheets, this is not an ideal situation. It is a big drain on their time, and if the timesheets are filled in by hand it still doesn’t eliminate the possibility of misreading entries and passing on incorrect information. 

 

You can see examples of NHS wage fraud thanks to timesheets here. 

 

A good way to counteract this problem is to replace the timesheets with a computerised system. Even filling in timesheets on a computer wold remove the effort of collecting and deciphering them from the supervisors, but if accuracy is what you want then you need a full time and attendance system.

 

Using a system from Time and Attendance Wales, staff could clock in and out using either radio-frequency smartcards, which fit easily onto a lanyard or into a uniform pocket, or their fingerprints. This data is then sent to the central system and can be easily exported for payroll or turned into reports using the report wizard.