Hospitals: Consultants

(asked on 7th September 2015) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the proportion of consultants who opt out of non-emergency work at weekends.


Answered by
 Portrait
Ben Gummer
This question was answered on 15th September 2015

In its 2013 report Managing NHS hospital consultants the National Audit Office (NAO) reported that 91% of trusts who responded to its survey paid for additional work using locally agreed rates. The NAO expressed the view that “This is likely to be linked to the fact that the contract allows consultants to refuse to work outside 7am to 7pm Monday to Friday.”

We know that the practical effects of consultants’ ability to opt-out of non-emergency work at weekends and in the evenings are:

- an effective veto over work at these times and over service changes;

- consultants being able to negotiate higher rates than national contract rates for work at these times, which drives up the cost of additional work from existing staff, and the costs of agency staff and locum staff;

- a practical and financial barrier to scheduling consultants and developing and delivering cost-effective and high-quality services in evenings and weekends;

- impacts on quality/patient care and on mortality rates – senior decision-makers are not available at the weekends; and

- impacts on the quality of education and training of junior doctors, who provide the majority of care at these times, and have less exposure (including during the week, as a consequence of working patterns) to working with consultants.

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