OUTSOURCING of radiology amid staff shortages in Scotland’s health service has been branded a “scandal” by Labour, as it is revealed the bill has topped £46 million.

Information released to the party under freedom of information legislation shows the use of private firms for the service has ballooned in recent years from £6.9m in 2018-19  to £12.2m last year — a growth of 78 per cent.

The figure point to a consistent rise in the use of private firms over the last decade, with the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) estimating the cost at £3.5m in 2013-14.

The latest revelations on the costs of outsourcing come after years of RCR campaigning on staff shortages in the service, warning in 2018 that patients were being “increasingly adversely impacted by radiology workforce shortages” and services “buckling because there are simply not enough radiologists to sustain current provision.”

Just last month, an RCR report showed that only 24 per cent of clinical directors said their radiology department had “sufficient consultant clinical radiologists to deliver safe and effective levels of patient care” — a number that has dropped from 30 per cent a year earlier.

Launching their report, RCR said: “Delays in patient care are not new but the current serious situation is the direct result of severe shortages in the professions critical to diagnosing and treating cancer patients.

“The government has failed to tackle this worsening workforce crisis, by not training enough doctors over recent years and failing to retain the doctors we have.”

One consultant, who contributed to the report, said: “We are expected to do more in the same time and this can only lead to fatigue, errors and burn-out.”

Scottish Labour’s Jackie Baillie said: “While our NHS is stretched to breaking point, eye-watering sums of money are being handed over to private companies to plug staffing gaps.

“This is the cost of 16 years of disastrous workforce planning and financial mismanagement under the SNP.

“Experts have been sounding the alarm on this growing workforce challenges for years, but their warnings have been ignored — and things are at crisis point.

“[First Minister] Humza Yousaf and Health Secretary Michael Matheson need to take urgent action to address the recruitment crisis in the NHS and end this scandal.”