NURSES could be recruited from overseas to work in Gwent’s hospitals as part of a drive to bring down the soaring cost of hiring agency staff.

The cost to Aneurin Bevan University Health Board of agency nurses will be around £6million in 2014/15, compared to £3.5m last year.

But monthly bills have increased since late last summer, and particularly during December-February, an extremely challenging period for the NHS.

During that three-month period alone, the health board spent more than £2.3m of its total agency bill this year, with the figure for February hitting £940,000.

The trend for agency nurse spending in Gwent is upward, and the health board has been warned that unless arrested, the bill next year could reach £12m.

The issue has been identified as a major risk to the health board breaking even next year, as it would have been this year without several one-off factors improving the situation.

The health board reported a deficit of £569,000 at the end of February on its annual budget of more than £1 billion and expects to break even by the end of the financial year next week.

Like other health boards in Wales, it has been helped by a multi-million injection of cash into the NHS by the Welsh Government, to help meet a range of challenges including waiting times and winter pressures.

Despite that, a deficit of more than £3m was still being predicted by Gwent’s health board at the turn of year, unless further savings could be found.

Factors that have helped ease that burden include the slippage of costs related to some primary care projects, a reduction in costs for frailty programme services, lower than anticipated demand for continuing healthcare packages, and lower than forecast energy bills over the winter.

Lower than forecast too, have been costs for drugs at Velindre Cancer Centre, and for cardiac surgery.

Finance director Alan Brace said the health board is “benefiting from a lot of one-offs” in financial terms, but warned that some of these benefits are impacting on performance, for instance with elective surgery.

“We will need to catch up some of the lost ground that is giving us financial benefit, for instance on cardiac surgery, and the nursing agency spend is worrying,” he said.

Additional capacity required during the winter has contributed to rising agency costs, while sickness levels - which have been as high as 10-15 per cent on some wards - are also a factor.

Anne Phillimore, the health board’s director of workforce and organisational development, said recruiting nurses from overseas would be “very much a stop-gap measure” with the focus on trying to attract nurses who have left the profession but are already trained, to return to practice.

Nursing director Denise Llewellyn said rising agency costs are not solely down to increased use, as commission charges from nursing agencies have also risen recently.