A MISSION to recruit more doctors is heading out to India this month from the local health trust in a desperate bid to plug its gap in medics.
Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust (WAHT) currently has 160 vacancies for doctors across its three hospital sites in Redditch, Worcester and Kidderminster.
Even though an additional 70 are due to be appointed in the next three months, that still leaves them with a huge recruitment shortfall.
And health chiefs recognise the ongoing issue of Brexit could have a major impact on the Trust’s recruitment strategy depending on what curbs, if any, are imposed on immigration.
Trust chairman Karagh Merrick told a board meeting: “There is more than a degree of uncertainty around Brexit and we have looked at a number of scenarios and we will progress those to the point in time it affects us, but at the moment we simply do not know.”
WAHT also has a significant shortfall in its nursing cover – currently there are 158 nursing vacancies, of which 60 are ward based.
Recent figures show that nationwide, more nurses are now leaving the profession than joining, and in an effort to fill that void in the Trust’s staffing rota, a similar overseas mission to recruit more nurses is also under consideration.
Staffing levels are a key issue for the Trust, which is having to rely on expensive agency or bank workers to properly run its services while being expected to save £20.9million as part of a ‘cost improvement programme’.
For May, £3.2million was spent on pay for such staff against an overall wage bill for the month of £22.2million – an overspend of £600,000 on plan.
Members of the Trust board acknowledged the key summer months, when more staff would be on holiday, would be a challenging time to battle to keep costs down.
WAHT recently had its Care Quality Commission rating of ‘Inadequate’ confirmed by inspectors, who said in some respects it had actually got worse rather than better.
It remains in ‘special measures’.
However, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has spoken of his confidence that the new management team, headed by Michelle McKay, has made a promising start.
