It’s worrying to see your headline accusing A&E consultants of cashing in on the NHS crisis (The locums on £1,760 a day, 3 February). This is a figure an NHS chief executive calculated could be reached if an experienced emergency medicine consultant worked for 16 hours on an hourly rate of £110. Instead of just repeating what the public accounts committee is saying, it would be more helpful to look for the actual evidence and the underlying causes. Where is the evidence that consultants are clocking up endless hours at this rate? How much commission are agencies receiving? And is anyone challenging Margaret Hodge’s figure that it costs £400,000 to train a surgeon? Surgeons, like all medics, run up huge tuition-fee debts during the first years of their long training as they pay full fees , and while they may be paid a salary while training in hospitals, they are actually providing a service to the NHS. If the earning power of A&E locums is in fact true, and this is what the market is dictating, then maybe the government will finally understand why markets and healthcare don’t mix.
Dr Paul Hobday
Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Maidstone and the Weald, National Health Action Party
