Reducing expenditure on NHS agency staff: rules and price caps

From 1 April 2016,  trusts in scope of the rules are required to procure all agency staff via the framework agreements or arrangements approved by NHS Improvement.

This tool, which has been developed with pilot sites, will allow you to diagnose issues, decide ways forward and implement improvements quickly.

We recently hosted a webinar that outlines the rules and explains how to use our new diagnostic tool. It’s available to watch onlineopens in a new window.

 

The following toolkits will help trusts maximise the use of staff banks, medical locums and reduce overall agency spend:

• Making effective use of staff banks
• Reducing reliance on medical locums: a practical guide for medical directors

• All NHS trusts, NHS foundation trusts receiving interim support from the Department of Health and NHS foundation trusts in breach of their licence for financial reasons
• All other foundation trusts are strongly encouraged to comply
• Ambulance trusts and ambulance foundation trusts are covered by the ceiling and framework rules from 1 April 2016 and the price cap and maximum wage rate rules from 1 July 2016

• The agency rules cover all staff groups: nursing, medical, all other clinical and other non-clinical agency staff
• The agency rules do not apply to substantive/permanent staff or bank staff

In addition to the agency rules, we’ve also implemented an approval process for the procurement of interim agency very senior managers (VSMs) earning above £750 a day by trusts.

From 31 October these rules will apply to:

• all NHS trusts
• NHS foundation trusts receiving interim support from the Department of Health (DH)
• NHS foundation trusts in breach of their licence for financial reasons

All other foundation trusts are strongly encouraged to comply with this process.

If you have any queries or concerns, please email nhsi.agencyrules@nhs.net.

We’ve produced a series of webinars to help you reduce your trust’s agency spend:

• Identifying issues in your trustopens in a new window: explains the rules and demonstrates how to use our diagnostic tool
• Effective rosteringopens in a new window: highlights the principles of efficient rostering, including e-rostering
• Case study in improving A&E staffingopens in a new window: hear how one trust increased recruitment and retention of medical staff in A&E
• Agency rules updateopens in a new window: find out about using approved frameworks for the procurement of all agency staff, and the price caps reduction
• A&E delaysopens in a new window: learn how performance against the 4-hour A&E standard reached its lowest level for more than 10 years
• Reducing reliance on medical agency staffopens in a new window: provides practical steps for trusts to take to reduce reliance on medical agency staff.