Achi news desk-
Hospitals and long-term care homes spent nearly $1 billion last year to fill shifts with nurses and personal support workers from private staffing agencies, a Health Ministry document estimates.
A November 2023 staffing agency update obtained by The Canadian Press through a freedom of information request shows that agency use increased from 2021-22 to 2022-23 by metric – in hospitals and long-term care, in hours worked and total costs.
Hospitals and long-term care homes turn to staffing agencies when they cannot fill all their shifts with workers, and the temporary nurses and PSWs from agencies allow them to continue providing services in the face of staff shortages.
But agencies are charging double or even triple the normal hourly rate for their staff, hospitals and long-term care homes have said.
The Minister of Health, Sylvia Jones, has recently reiterated that the use of agencies is decreasing in the province.
“With respect, Speaker, there are important facts in this discussion,” he told the legislature in October. “The use of health personnel – agency nursing – has actually decreased in the province of Ontario.”
A spokesperson for Jones wrote in a statement that the proportion of agency nurses and the total number of hours worked by agency staff has decreased since 2017.
But that was not the case in the period 2021-22 to 2022-23, the most current data when the ministry’s document was written. He says organizations’ reliance on using agencies to address staffing challenges “continues to increase.”
“Staffing problems continue in hospitals and long-term care homes; vacancy rates remain steady despite adding staff through HHR (health human resources) programs,” wrote the ministry’s capacity and health workforce planning arm.
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“This is because staff are moving from hospitals/long-term care to other sectors (public health, telehealth) and agencies; and a generally higher demand for staff due to the capacity being added in the system (increase in hospitals and long-term beds, etc.).
Understanding the issues at play is key, says the planning branch.
“It is important to crystallize the problem we are trying to solve (high use, high cost), and respond to the choices that staff make when they choose to work for agencies (higher compensation, higher flexibility) ,” he wrote.
“This balance is essential to ensure the retention and satisfaction of our workforce.”
Lisa Levin, CEO of AdvantAge Ontario, which represents the province’s not-for-profit long-term care homes, said surveys of her organization’s members suggest the situation hasn’t improved much since 2022-23.
“We have been hearing from our members that the cost of agencies is crowding out the budgets for care,” he said.
Hospitals and long-term care homes spent about $368.64 million on agency nurses in 2021-22, and the projected cost in 2022-23 was $600.18 million, a 63 percent increase, the ministry document said.
When the cost of personal support workers from agencies is added, the total for the final year comes to more than $952.8 million, the document says.
The percentage of hours worked in hospitals by agency nurses was 0.7 per cent in 2021-22 and that rose to 1.5 per cent next year, the document said, with an increase of 123 per cent when looking at total hours.
In long-term care, the percentage of hours worked by agency staff increased from 7.6 per cent to 14.9 per cent in the same period, an increase of 103 per cent when looking at total hours.
Agency staffing is a tool that many northern and rural hospitals rely on, said a spokesman for Jones.
“We will continue to take steps to grow our healthcare workforce in these communities, building on our progress adding 17,000 new nurses this year, through programs such as the Learn and Wait grant and breaking down barriers to make it easier for people who are internationally and internationally educated. nurses to practice in Ontario,” Hannah Jensen wrote in a statement.
Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said Ontario’s growing reliance on staffing agencies means more tax dollars end up in the hands of agencies that are allowed to charge whatever they want.
“It is completely inappropriate, financially unsustainable and not a real solution to the issues we face,” he wrote in a statement.
The NDP Leader, Marit Stiles, said that her party and its experts have been ringing the alarm bells about staffing agencies for a long time.
“Ford’s Conservatives are underfunding our health care system so badly that hospitals and long-term care homes are being left with no choice but to use these private nursing agencies,” he wrote in a statement.
“Not only does this cost us all more money, it drains workers further from the public system.”
Hospitals and long-term care homes have said staffing agencies are necessary and don’t want to see them banned, but many have called for an end to what they call price gouging.
The Long-Term Care Administration is “exploring the possibility of creating a vendor of record for approved LTC agencies to potentially support price regulation,” the document said.
Mantais has made that recommendation to the ministry, but it also says that any measure that is applied to staffing agencies for long-term care must be applied across the health sector so that no part of the system at a disadvantage.
& copy 2024 The Canadian Press
