Senior doctors are charging the NHS up to £200,000 extra per year in premium overtime rates to tackle waiting list backlogs.
Consultants – many working part-time – are being paid more than £200 per hour, or four times their regular salary, for extra shifts.
Doctors receiving up to £200,000 on top of their usual salary are effectively being paid double their annual pay packet for overtime alone, the BBC reports.
The NHS paid almost £1 billion in overtime pay to staff in 2023-24, with six in ten consultants picking up extra hours.
It comes as Labour set out its plan to tackle waiting lists in last week’s budget, pledging an extra £25 billion for the NHS this year and next.
An investigation found that while the average overtime pay for NHS consultants was just over £27,000 per year, at least half of trusts are paying some in excess of £100,000.
One consultant at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was paid in excess of £208,000. This was for 128 days of work, with pay averaging £188 per hour.
Medway NHS Foundation Trust also paid one staff member more than £200,000 – with three radiologists picking up at least £150,000 each.
Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust paid three consultants more than £100,000, with one earning above £198,000.
And NHS Humber Health Partnership, which runs five hospitals, paid three consultants between £185,000 and £240,000.
The NHS and hospital trusts said that they must pay competitive rates that match those available in the private sector in order to tackle waiting list backlogs.
They added prices had been driven up by staffing issues, recent strike action and staff sickness.
The British Medical Association (BMA) told the BBC the NHS would not have to rely on expensive overtime pay if there were not significant staff shortages.
The NHS said it now employees more consultants than previously, accounting for some of the rise in overtime pay, and it is reducing reliance on agency staff which can be even more expensive.
But a senior NHS source said consultants place the NHS in an impossible negotiating position.
‘Consultants hold all the cards – they know we cannot make progress on the backlog without them,’ they said.
They added consultants’ contracts meant they can opt out of working weekends and evening shifts – which could pose a major problem for Labour’s plan to use unsociable hours to bring down waiting lists.
BMA consultant co-leaders Dr Helen Neary and Dr Shanu Datta said: ‘Unfortunately, a declining workforce in crisis and spiralling patient demand – which has led to sky high waiting lists – means that extra hours of work are essential to get the job done.’