“It’s corrosive. They’re driving up prices: Agency staffing is costing hospitals, LTC homes, critics say

Ontario hospitals and nursing homes face workforce gap are filled by nurses and others. A worker hired from an agency at a cost that is more than double his hourly wage earned by staff.

The problem has been bubbling under the surface, especially in the Toronto area and northern Ontario, but it is at its peak across the province as Ontario grapples with the health staff crisis.

“If I make $112 an hour and you make $45, how do you think I will make it over?” More than 68,000 registered nurses and others Kathryn Hoy, president of the Ontario Nurses Association, which represents health professionals, said:

Recruitment agencies have provided temporary staff to hospitals for years to fill vacancies. But the pandemic has increased reliance on agencies to provide nurses and other workers to fill vacancies, driving up costs and keeping workers out of work, the nurses union said.

"I spoke with a nurse who was offered $112 an hour to work in the same ICU," Hui said.

Nathalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, said a network of more than 400 grassroots community organizations had been opposing staffing government agencies for years, and now outright bans. said he was asking to

"It's corrosive. They're raising prices," she said.

The Canadian Federation of Nurses' Unions has asked the Canadian Comptroller General to conduct an audit of the private companies contracted to fill nursing positions, along with their provincial counterparts. For the past 5 years.

"Where does the public money go? There is a complete lack of transparency about what they are paying agency nurses and how much they are paying agencies," he said. Linda Cyrus, president of the federation, which has about 200,000 members, said. There is very little public information about dolphins. Most of them are anecdotes.

In a Twitter video, Dr. Michael Warner, his ICU physician at Toronto's Michael Garron Hospital, said pre-COVID, the institution was in hospitals where he was 65 per hour. Said they were charging dollars. They are now charging $110 an hour, he said.

``I think this is exploitative and predatory. It will be $140," he said.

Nurses don't keep everything. But even after factoring in other factors such as vacation pay and pensions, the amount they keep is much higher than union wages, Warner said.

Last year, the agency was charging his staff double his income. Lisa Levin, CEO of her AdvantAge Ontario, which represents more than 200 municipal and nonprofit housing, says the situation is now more than that.

Some LTC Homes have no choice but to use money intended for other purposes to pay agency labor costs, she said. 64} “In the early days of COVID, agencies helped families a lot. After the first few waves, they seem to have increased their prices. It's all over the place," says Levin.

"Agencies are picking, approaching, and offering higher salaries to staff. Finding people in our homes is a lot harder."

Hoy aims to publish figures soon that will provide insight into the extent of this problem. Hospitals using agency staff must pay a penalty to ONA. Some checks, she said, are four times her past. ONA is collecting information on a hospital-by-hospital basis and plans to release it within the next month.

Agency nurses can help in times of crisis but should only be used as a short-term stopgap, says university gender, diversity and professional research committee Chief Ivy Bourgeault said. Ottawa.

"If you work right next to someone else and they earn more than you, that's a built-in pay gap. It provokes resentment," said Burjot. .

Solutions to get people back on track include improving working conditions, improving work culture, and support from supervisors, managers, and administrators. For example, nurses face high levels of workplace violence, she said.

"We all thought it was about the salary," said Cyrus. "But it's about flexibility and getting away from hospital politics. Temporary nurses are not employees. They do their job, wash their hands, and leave."

Everyone focuses on hiring, but a focus on retention is more important, says Bourgeault.

"You can't hire people in a bleeding system. Can't we pay more for the nurses there and offer incentives for those who leave?"

} Nurses' unions and others argue that Bill 124, which limits salary increases to 1% per year for three years, must be repealed. They also argue that nurses should be paid on a par with police officers. Bourgeault says that being part of her mobile workforce should be incentivized.

We also need to bring everyone together at the table to discuss the human resource crisis, she said. she said. It also means finding the necessary incentives to hire nurses again.

I need to learn what it takes to put them back together.

Filling the agency work gap with agency workers does not appear to occur as frequently in Ottawa as it does elsewhere in the state.

Both Queensway Carlton Hospital and her CHEO say they do not employ temporary nurses. Her four municipal nursing homes in Ottawa also do not employ temporary nurses or her PSW.

A spokesperson for Ottawa Hospital said the hospital has spent the past five years as part of a long-standing agreement to unload ambulances in the emergency department, giving the Ottawa community her health a small amount of time from her registry. said to have been using But outside of this, hospitals don't reserve nursing hours for agencies.

Perth and Smith Falls District Hospital closed her ER at her Perth site for about three weeks this summer. According to Dr. Alan Drummond, the hospital's emergency room physician and public relations co-chair of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, two agency nurses are employed.

Drummond said she was initially unsatisfied with the solution, but the nurses are doing well.

"Will our emergency room be open without them? Probably not.

Rachel Muir, who heads the hospital's Ontario Nurses Association division, said: , believes that hiring agency nurses is inevitable in Ottawa.

"We are very short of nurses and there are so many vacancies that patients receive There are not enough nurses to safely provide the care they deserve, and they are very reluctant to close beds or scale back the services currently being offered," she said. rice field. she said.

Prime Minister Doug Ford told reporters last week that he could not control the prices that private agencies charge.

"Can you tell a private company whether this should be paid to an employee or that should be paid? I can't," he said.