NHS wastes £15m on suspensions

The NHS is wasting nearly £15 million a year keeping more than 100 hospital consultants off work, it was revealed today.

Figures seen by the Evening Standard reveal that the number of suspended doctors is at least three times higher than official Government statistics - and the cost to taxpayers is rising.

A third of all hospital trusts have at least one consultant either formally suspended or on unofficial leave while they are being investigated for alleged malpractice. Some spend up to two years suspended on full pay - but only 14 per cent are convicted of disciplinary charges, according to one study.

The £15million would pay for annual salaries for 750 newly qualified nurses, 1,000 heart bypass operations or 2,500 hip replacements.

Government spending watchdog the National Audit Office has launched an investigation into the issue.

Ministers admit they have no idea how many doctors are formally and informally suspended, or how much they are costing the taxpayer in salary, legal fees and payments for replacement staff.

Dr Bob Broughton, a British Medical Association member who has investigated the issue, said: "The bill to the taxpayer is totally unacceptable. We estimate that the cost to the country runs into several millions of pounds, which in this day and age should be going on hip replacements, cataract operations and other areas of the NHS where patients can be helped."

Department of Health figures show that, during the first quarter of this year, there were 29 doctors suspended on full pay for more than six months, at a total cost of £5,095,742. The cost has risen from £3.9million in 2000 and £4.2million last year.

The bill includes the salaries of the doctors, 22 of whom are senior consultants, legal fees for disciplinary actions and the cost of employing expensive replacements.

But the organisations which defend doctors against allegations of wrongdoing say the true figure and cost is far higher because many hospital trusts are forcing staff to take "special" or "gardening" leave rather than formally suspending them.

Trust bosses do not have to give doctors a reason for banning them from working, and the Government does not collect statistics for staff on special leave, so the official figures do not reveal the true scale of the problem.

The two main defence groups - the Medical Protection Society (MPS) and Medical Defence Union (MDU) say that between them they are representing around 100 doctors either formally suspended or informally banned from working by being put on special leave - three times the official figure.

That means the health service is paying out an estimated £15 million at least in annual bills for doctors accused of wrongdoing - even though many may never be formally charged with a disciplinary offence, and the majority will be cleared of any charges that are brought.

Dr Peter Schutte, deputy head of advisory services at the MDU, said: "We are very concerned about both the number of doctors who are suspended, informally and formally, and the length of time it takes for disciplinary procedures to be resolved.

"Some doctors are being informally suspended for up to two years. The trust does not have to give any reason for informal suspensions, and during that time the doctors are not allowed in the hospital, cannot speak with patients and are banned from talking to colleagues."

Dr Schutte said trusts often use "gardening leave" as an easy way to effectively ban senior consultants who may have been critical of their bosses - or as a defensive measure to protect their own jobs.

Referring to the scandal of deaths of babies after heart surgery at Bristol Royal Infirmary in the early Nineties, which led to a damning report this year, he added: "A lot of chief executives have become very nervous since Bristol, because in that case the chief executive was disciplined for not taking action when concerns about standards first showed up.

"It means that rather than being an action of last resort, chief executives have a tendency to suspend doctors or put them on leave as a way of showing that they are acting quickly, even when the circumstances do not warrant suspension. There also seems to be a tendency to put someone on gardening leave if they are a difficult or say bolshie individual - if they are always making trouble."

A study last year by Dr Peter Tomlin, an anaesthetist who has set up a support group for suspended doctors, found only 14 per cent of suspended doctors are actually found guilty of any wrongdoing.

So many were found to have done nothing wrong, he estimated that the cost to the NHS of actually finding a single doctor professionally incompetent worked out at £12 million.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said reform of the General Medical Council and the establishment of the new National Clinical Assessment Authority, which will test doctors' competence, will speed up the disciplinary process and protect patients.