HOSPITAL chiefs are planning to cut back on costly agency nurses currently used to plug the staff shortages gap at Wycombe Hospital.

The hospital is even employing a bank manager to help slash the bill for agency staff which can cost up to £100,000 a month.

Martin Leaver, spokesman for the South Buckinghamshire NHS Trust, explained that the idea behind the new position was to allow the bank manager to manage the numbers of agency or bank' staff, as they are called, more effectively.

In response to a question on whether agency staff had been used effectively in the past, he said: “The aim of this new post is to better co-ordinate staff.”

The use of agency staff to keep wards ticking over was discussed at a meeting of the South Buckinghamshire NHS Trust Board on Wednesday when bosses vowed to try to slash the bill.

Keith Broadey, director of human resources at Wycombe Hospital, told the meeting that significant expenditure' had gone into drafting in agency staff who can demand up to double the hourly rate of hospital staff.

But he said they would try to cut this by monitoring the use of agency staff more closely and identifying the slots where staff were needed in advance to allow time to use their own staff.

They also hope to fill the staff void with new recruits from abroad and after recent visits to Singapore and the Philippines they have 43 recruits expected to arrive in July and September.

However, the meeting was told that the new recruits would need to shadow nurses and would probably take from three to six months before settling in, so in the meantime staffing levels would still need to be supported.