Manitoba’s reliance on private nurses skyrocketed in 2022

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This article was published 09/05/2023 (372 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba government relied on private agency nurses more than ever in 2022, despite its $200-million plan to recruit and retain nurses in the public health care system.

The Manitoba Nurses Union provided figures late Wednesday that show the health regions racked up 662,564 hours in private agency nurse time last year. It represents a 31 per cent increase from 2021.

The government was grilled in question period Wednesday for spending on for-profit agency nurses rather than investing in the public system.

“They refused to listen to front-line health workers. They let vacancies reach dangerous levels and they continued to cut health care services Manitobans rely on,” NDP health critic Uzoma Asagwara told the house. “One thing they seem to have no problem with is spending millions of dollars on for-profit providers rather than investing in our health care system.”

The government spent $5.24 million on private agency nurses from August 2022 to February 2023 in the Southern Health region alone, Asagwara said, referring to data obtained through a freedom of information request.

The monthly figures show just over $1 million was spent on agency nurses in the region in August. By February, the amount was $655,720.

Health Minister Audrey Gordon said measures to recruit and retain nurses are working.

“The health human resources action plan is showing significant improvements,” she told the house.

The $200-million plan to recruit 2,000 health care professionals was announced in November and included financial incentives to attract nurses to the public system.

Gordon pointed to the hiring of 55 nurses into the Manitoba government’s provincial nursing pool since its inception late last year. She said they’ve worked 900 shifts in the first three months of this year in Northern, Interlake-Eastern and Prairie Mountain health regions.

“Two-thirds of those nurses returned to the public system from private agency nursing,” the health minister said. “Welcome back and happy Nurses Week.”

In a bid to keep public system numbers stable, Shared Health has been working with the nurses union to develop a float pool to give nurses the opportunity to take shifts where and when it is most convenient.

Gordon also brought up the hiring of 259 nurses who were part of the 900 new health-care hires since November that the PC government announced last week.

Her department still hasn’t answered questions about where those nurses came from, where they work now, or how many left the system at the same time.

“When the government says ‘We’ve hired this many nurses’ is that a nurse who used to work at Health Sciences Centre and now works at the Grace?” asked Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson.

“When you say you’ve hired a nurse, did they leave another facility to come to you? Because if they did, we haven’t changed anything,” she said in an interview Wednesday.

“All we’ve done is play a shell game and just move nurses around,” Jackson said. “So her announcement left so many questions that are unanswered, we don’t really know the net result is.”

The health minister’s press secretary said Gordon was not available to speak to reporters after question period because she had a meeting.

“This government is clearly still in the path of spending dollars on private, for-profit agency companies versus investing in and strengthening the public health care system, which is not the right approach,” the NDP health critic said outside the chamber. Mandatory overtime and burnout still keep nurses away from the public system and the rollout of financial incentives has been slow and poor, Asagwara said.

“There doesn’t seem to be an effective plan at all,” Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said. He said there was no specific reference to addressing the nursing shortage in the provincial budget.

“It was a massive lost opportunity at a time when we need to be shoring up and stabilizing the health care system,” he said.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca