Top doctors pay up £50,000 for less work, report shows

London: Senior doctors earn £50,000 (Dh285,700) more than they did a decade ago, but their workload has fallen, a damning report revealed.

Hospital consultants now take home £120,000 a year, despite the fact that on average they carry out fewer treatments than ten years ago when they earned less.

The report by the National Audit Office estimates the NHS could save up to £1.6 billion a year if hospitals became more efficient and spent less on over-inflated salaries.

The average consultant has seen their earnings leap by 70 per cent since the introduction of a new contract by Labour in 2003, designed to reward them for improving the quality of NHS care. But the government spending watchdog found their productivity has fallen by 3 per cent.

Workload

At the same time, the workload of other staff such as nurses and midwives has steadily increased, even though their pay rises have been far smaller. The report also warned hospitals were not doing enough to curb consultants' lifetime bonuses, which can see them earning up to £76,000 a year on top of their salary.

These payouts, known as clinical excellence awards, are paid out every year even if they no longer carry out the work for which the money was initially paid.

The NAO found total productivity of hospitals, measured by comparing numbers of patients treated with costs of staff, drugs and equipment, has fallen by 11 per cent in the last decade. It warned NHS spending has almost doubled in a decade to a predicted £102 billion.