Senior doctors are charging the NHS up to £200,000 extra per year in premium overtime rates amid pressure to cut waiting lists.
That is nearly double the average basic pay for a full-time consultant in England, the BBC reports.
Doctors receiving up to £200,000 on top of their usual salary are effectively being paid double their annual pay packet for overtime alone.
Many of the consultants earning the most are believed to be part-time, they are being paid more than £200 per hour, or four times their normal pay, for extra shifts.
In response, Health Secretary Wes Streeting told the BBC: “I don't think the rates are acceptable. Every penny that goes into the NHS needs to be well spent.”
The NHS paid almost £1 billion in overtime pay to staff in 2023-24, with six in ten consultants picking up extra hours.
The British Medical Association (BMA), doctors' union, believes the NHS would not have to rely so much on overtime were it not for staffing shortages.
Some 6.42 million patients were waiting for 7.64 million procedures in August, up from 6.39m patients and 7.42m procedures in July with experts warning that the NHS is “approaching winter in a bad shape”, after waiting lists grew to its highest level for 10 months.
The NHS has been plagued by strike days and sickness over the past year, which hospitals say have also been factors.
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The NHS, founded in 1948 to provide healthcare from cradle to grave, free at the point of use for everyone, is Europe's biggest employer but more than 100,000 key posts including doctors, nurses, paediatricians, lab technicians and cleaners remain unfilled.
NHS England said pressure on A&Es was “not letting up” after their busiest summer on record.
More than 38,000 patients waited over 12 hours from a decision to admit to actually being admitted in September, and 130,000 waited at least four hours.