last updated: Monday 11 May 2009, 11:34am

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NHS spent £350m on management consultants

The NHS spent £350 million on management consultants in England last year, new figures show.

Some £273 million of the money - the equivalent of 330 fully-staffed 28-bed medical wards or 9,160 experienced staff nurses - was not spent on patients, said the Royal College of Nursing.

The bulk of the money was spent on setting up competition in the health service and supporting bids for Foundation status by NHS trusts, said Chief Executive Peter Carter.

A report into up to 1,200 excess deaths in Mid-Staffordshire criticised the trust board for being more interested in attaining foundation status than patient care.

Mr Carter said: 'These figures are utterly shocking when you consider the difference that this money could have made to patients.

'A very significant sum of money is clearly being spent on setting up competition in the NHS and pursuing Foundation status, rather than being invested in patient care. You only have to look at what happened at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust to see the consequences of this.'

Cutting the money spent on management consultants could deliver 11 per cent of the £2.3 billion savings demanded from the Department of Health in Chancellor Alistair Darling's Budget last month, said Dr Carter.

'Before the Department of Health and local health trusts look at cutting frontline services, training budgets or new facilities, they need to look very carefully at the money spent on external advice and what value is added to the patient experience.

'When some individual management consultants are getting more than £1,000 a day to advise on finance, we must surely be able to afford improvements to the quality of patient care.'

The Department of Health said: 'Individual NHS organisations decide how best to invest their resources to ensure local people get the best possible care and services.

'We expect organisations to consider value for money and patients' interests in all aspects of their expenditure.'

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