Concerns have been raised about an almost 50% hike in NHS Grampian spending on nurses and midwives in the past year.
Figures obtained by the Scottish Conservatives show that the health board spent a total of £42.3 million to cover staff shortages between 2022 and 2023.
This marked a rise of 49.1% on the previous year when £28.4m was spent.
It is the highest sum spent by NHS Grampian for cover in the past nine years.
A further £17.6m was spent on locum doctors and dentists in 2022/2023 – a 17.1% rise from the year before.
North East MSP Liam Kerr has now criticised the Scottish Government for failing to help recruit permanent nursing and midwifery staff in the region.
He said: “The seemingly unstoppable and shocking rise in spending on agency staff at NHS Grampian is a shameful reflection on the Scottish Government’s dire workforce planning and management of our NHS.
“Locum doctors and agency staff do play a key role in supporting health services in the north-east and I thank them for the work they do.
“However, due to the Scottish Government’s failure in assisting with the recruitment of enough permanent staff at NHS Grampian, there is an ever-increasing reliance on expensive agency staff.
“Every penny is a prisoner, given the huge demand on services at the health board – so we can’t afford to spend ever-increasing sums on agency staff.”
More than half a billion spent across country
Across Scotland, the NHS spent a total of £567m on medical agency locum and nursing and midwifery bank and agency staff.
The figure has soared by more than a third in a year.
The majority of this money – £447.4m – was spent on nursing and midwifery agency and bank cover.
Spending on agency staff alone in Scotland has more than quadrupled over the last two years and is up 91% in a year.
NHS Highland has also recorded a significant increase in spending, with its £24.8m on bank and agency cover in 2022/2023 marking a 76.5% increase on the year before.
Meanwhile, NHS Orkney spent £2.6m in the same period and NHS Shetland spent £2.8m.
NHS Western Isles is the only health board in Scotland which spent less this year compared tp the year before, going from £1.8m to £1.7m.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “NHS Scotland staffing is over £9 billion a year, with spending on agency nursing a tiny fraction of this. It is important to note that the majority of temporary staffing comes from staff banks; these are NHS staff, working on NHS terms and conditions.
“We absolutely value our nursing staff and have reached historically high NHS staffing as well as investing £1 billion over two years on NHS Agenda for Change Pay which includes a recently accepted 6.5% pay rise for 2023/24.
“The Scottish Government actively supports health boards across Scotland to plan locally for service need and for service delivery – having invested £8m in international recruitment in 2022/23.”
