The Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast is paying an agency £32 per hour for nurses to work in its intensive care unit, the BBC has learned.
The hospital has admitted paying the money to the London based Mayfair recruitment agency.
Most NHS nurses who work there would be E grades and would get paid a maximum of £11.65 per hour.
Hospital spokesperson Dennis Gladstone said the nurses were employed to ensure government targets were met.
"It is Department of Health policy that the maximum waiting time for cardiac surgery should not be more than six months," he said.
Waiting targets
"We are doing our bit to try and meet that target and we have increased our cardiac surgery workload this year by 50 cases, helped in part by employing the additional staff."
David Bingham of the Department of Health said they hoped to have more staff trained up to reduce reliance upon agency workers.
"My understanding is that within three months we will have trained up our own staff to undertake the procedures," he said.
"It's inevitable when you make a special initiative that it will make an extra call on resources and that's essentially what this is about."
Janice Smyth of the Royal College of Nurses said it was essential that NHS nurses already on the wards were kept informed of management decisions.
She said: "As an organisation representing nurses, the Royal College of Nursing would want to make sure that the nursing team was consulted and that nurses understood why employers had to take steps to deliver services to patients."
The agency declined to reveal how much of their fee was given to the nurses.
^ Back to top | BBC Sport Home | BBC Homepage | Contact us | Help | ©