Well this article is a sign both of the times and significant workforce malaise facing the NHS. It tells us:
Some of the country’s most senior NHS clinicians are earning a lucrative sideline running private firms that offer to cut waiting lists at their own hospitals, the Observer can reveal.
Top consultants in Manchester, Sheffield and London are among directors of “insourcing” agencies that charge the health service to treat patients at weekends and evenings and have won millions of pounds of work.
Some hold leadership roles at NHS trusts that have awarded contracts to their own companies, raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
One deputy medical director jointly ran a firm that provided “insourcing” solutions to his own NHS trust before it was sold in a £13m deal last year. Other consultants have set up firms that they and their colleagues work shifts through themselves, often at rates above NHS price caps.