Hospital consultants are being paid up to £200,000 a year in overtime to help clear the NHS waiting lists, figures have revealed. An investigation by BBC News obtained data from 41 hospital trusts in England, finding that some consultants were being paid £188 an hour to work beyond their contracted hours. More than half of hospitals were found to have paid more than £100,000 to individual consultants in overtime in 2023-24. One consultant at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust earned more than £208,000 in overtime for 128 days’ work. He added: “Every penny that goes into the NHS needs to be well spent.”Latest NHS data shows that the average consultant earned £139,936
