North-east health chiefs agreed upon a raft of cost-saving measures yesterday to help the regional health board reach its savings target of 2.1% for next year.
One of the areas highlighted for cuts by NHS Grampian was expenditure on non-contract doctors and nurses to fill important vacancies.
Board papers revealed that, during the last year, a staggering £16 million had been spent on locum doctors, £6.7million more than the previous year and an increase of around 72%.
And, in the same period, £1.98million was spent on temporary nursing staff, more than twice the previous year’s total spend of £900,000.
However, NHS Grampian’s chiefs have noted an increase in applications for non-medical roles, which one board member attributed to north-east residents losing their jobs in the oil and gas industry in recent years.
Annie Ingram, the director of workforce for the health board, said: “We’ve done a lot of work to try and improve our recruitment, and we’ve had some successes in some areas and we continue to have challenges in other areas.
“We have been taking account of changes in the wider economy and changes in jobs in the north-east.
“A couple of years ago, we wouldn’t have been able to fill non-health jobs, but, for the first time ever, we’ve got all those posts filled.
“We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of people applying for certain posts.
“A couple of years ago, for example, we would struggle to recruit in areas such as administration, but a recent post in the admin area attracted 150 applications.
“So there are good things and bad things about the changes in the economy for us as an organisation.”