Agency nurse spending on track for record high

Manitoba spent more than $56 million on private agency nurses hired to fill staffing gaps in the first nine months of the 2023-24 fiscal year.

The most recent figures, provided by Shared Health, include expenditures up to Dec. 31. While final-quarter data up to March 31 was not yet available, the spending is on pace to hit another record high.

Agency nurses cost the province a total of $60 million in 2022-23 and the spending on travel nurses has never been higher.

At nearly $21 million, regional spending is highest in the Prairie Mountain region, where the health authority is responsible for filling nursing shifts in many small, rural hospitals across a large swath of the province that stretches more than 500 kilometres from Pelican Rapids in the north to Cartwright in the south, east to Treherne and west to Melita. The area also includes Dauphin and Brandon.

The health region has been “compelled” to use agency nurses to serve that large geographic area, in addition to making use of the provincial nurse float pool, Prairie Mountain Health CEO Treena Slate said in an emailed statement Thursday.

Officials are actively working on recruitment and retention, by continuing to try to increase student-nurse placements and giving job opportunities to undergraduate student nurses, as well as looking to internationally educated nurses and health-care aides to fill gaps, Slate said.

The health region offers grants for students and is providing financial incentives to nurses to try to increase the number of shifts they work, she said.

The health authority is also offering mentorship programs and trying to communicate job opportunities through notices to the provincial float pool, she said.

Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson said the agency expenditures are “astounding,” particularly considering the cost of overtime within the public system.

The union has been collecting data that shows Manitoba public-sector nurses worked more than a million hours of overtime in the past year, but costs of private-agency nurses continue to rise.

“This is absolutely astounding, the amount of money that’s come out of the public purse for agency staff in this province,” Jackson said, adding she has consistently called for a retention plan to incentivize nurses to remain in the public sector.

“What we end up with is having more and more nurses go to agencies, which is costing more and more money, and our shortages in the public system just get worse, all the time.”

The provincial government has said recruitment and retention of health professionals, including nurses, is a top priority.

Agency nurses who’ve previously spoken to the Free Press have emphasized they’ve pursued private-agency work in favour of better work-life balance rather than a bigger paycheque.

Jackson said she’d like to see a detailed retention and recruitment plan.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing that, because until we do that, we’re never going to be able to stabilize staffing and we are always going to depend on overtime and agency staff as a basic staffing tool,” she said.

“And I think that absolutely defies what the public health-care system is all about.”

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca