Tayside’s long-running struggle to attract psychiatrists has seen health chiefs stump up millions of pounds extra for locum doctors.
New data shows £11.3 million has been spent in the last three years on highly-paid temporary staff to keep services running.
There are currently 14 vacancies for psychiatric consultants at cash-strapped NHS Tayside. The shortfall has previously been deemed a “major risk” to services by critics.
Dr Crawford Reid, a Perth & Kinross conservative councillor, said locum spending is a “waste of money”.
He said: “I would suggest it is probably not a malicious waste of money by NHS Tayside.
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“It is however, not very good use of precious resources. It is very hard to imagine that this huge bill was not known by the health minister of the day, and the Scottish Government should have questioned this.
“It demonstrates that throwing money at a problem does not always solve it.
“I understand some locums were ‘parachuted’ in to shore-up the on-call rota. From experience, the locums probably earned vast amounts of money for covering weekend shifts, and I would imagine, be paid at least £50 per hour for a 64-hour shift.”
Carseview Centre at centre of concerns
The staff shortage in mental health services has spiralled in recent years.
Vacancies in general adult psychiatry roles shot up from just two in 2018 to 14 last year.
Mental health support in the region is to be given a major overhaul after a damning review found local people looking for help were consistently let down.
Past issues included people with suicidal thoughts being delayed care and staff at Dundee’s Carseview Centre having pinned patients down for lengthy periods in dangerous positions.
Call for Carseview unit to be closed down in BBC documentary
Dr Reid added: “There is without doubt a nationwide shortage of psychiatric consultants.
“However, Tayside has a tremendous university and teaching hospital, with an excellent university department of psychiatry.
“The health board needs to be more imaginative than putting an advert in the British Medical Journal.
“There are many ways to incentivise people to relocate here – a start would be to offer senior trainees consultant posts.”
A spokesperson for NHS Tayside said: “Like many other health boards, NHS Tayside is affected by a national shortage of consultant psychiatrists in Scotland and the UK.
“Our recent UK-wide recruitment campaign has recruited two consultant psychiatrists for General Adult Psychiatry.
“We continue to actively recruit to consultant psychiatrist posts in mental health and learning disability services.
“Locum consultants provide essential support by covering vacant posts within the mental health and learning disability service and ensuring continuity of service while recruitment efforts continue.”