NHS D&G has spent more than £64 million on temporary consultants
The health board says recruiting permanent staff is an ongoing challenge.
The impact of staff shortages on NHS Dumfries and Galloway's finances is being laid bare.
New figures have emerged from an FOI showing the health board has spent more than £64 million on drafting locum consultants since 2019 - that's more than anywhere else in Scotland.
NHS Grampian are second highest having paid just under £61 million.
Also, during this period, it has cost NHS D&G just short of £4m on agency nurses.
It is likely the full total is higher, as the data only covers up to September last year - before the winter pressures hit.
Within the first half of this financial year, more than £4 million on locum consultant doctors.
South Scotland MSP Colin Smyth says these findings “expose the sheer scale of the workforce crisis our NHS faces” and says it is “shocking” the region has the highest bill in the country.
“A decade and a half of inaction on workforce planning has caused this dismal shortage of staff in almost every part of the NHS from nurses to surgeons and it means the NHS paying huge sums for locums, which is far more expensive than paying permanent staff.
“The extra costs mean less to spend on other health services and ultimately it is patients that pay the price with longer waiting times.
“As long as staff find themselves overworked and underpaid, we will never be able to recruit the NHS workers we need to cut these excessive bills for bringing in locum doctors and agency nurses.”
He wants this crisis to be a top priority so “patients can get the care they need from enough staff and we can get better value for money in our health service.”
An NHS D&G spokesperson says, “Spending on locums has been required across a range of services.
“This is due to ongoing challenges in recruiting to permanent posts, as well as a need to meet the health needs of a growing older population with increasingly complex medical issues.
“Recruitment remains one of our top priorities and we are pursuing a number of initiatives in an effort to reduce the need for as much locum support
“The Board is absolutely committed to ensuring that all steps are taken to manage our vacancies across the organisation in a proactive way to ensure that we can deliver our services for the public of Dumfries and Galloway.
“Meanwhile, there are robust processes embedded to ensure that NHS Dumfries and Galloway employs supplementary staff based on the necessity for the provision of service while reducing locum spend is one of the workstreams within the Financial Recovery Programme.”