Heather Wright/The Independent

A new report says Ontario’s reliance on for-profit nursing agencies is “hollowing out” Ontario hospitals.

The Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, represented by CUPE, commissioned a report by Andrew Longhurst and the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, highlighting the impact of provincial budget cuts and the $9.2 billion spent on private for-profit nursing agencies.

The report found Ontario had the lowest per capita hospital in Canada with nearly half of the hospitals post deficits in the last fiscal year.

Bluewater Health, for example, was in the hole $6.7 million in the last fiscal year and about $5.9 million the year before that.

Longhurst said, meantime, private for-profit staffing costs increased by 163 per cent from 2013-2014 to 2020-2023, outpacing hospital-employed staff growth.

And he says smaller hospitals in rural areas often depend on for-profit staffing.

“It is often the case in smaller communities, there are increased pressures to fill vacancies and to keep services open.

“It’s especially the case in northern Ontario, where there’s a real reliance,” he says adding, it’s an issue that’s playing out “virtually everywhere in the province.”

Longhurst says particularly in northern Ontario, there used to be travelling nurses. “But what we’re seeing is for profit, staffing has become much more of a pervasive problem across the province and across the country.”

Longhurst said even hospitals in Toronto rely on private nursing.

He adds hiring the temporary staff has become a bit of a vicious cycle.

“We have seen is that this growing dependence, or reliance on private for profit staffing is can be convenient … because you call the agency up and they’ll send somebody and that does reduce kind of the work involved in addressing the unfilled vacancies,” he says. But hospital administrators are seeing how costly the private nurses are and are “trying to wean themselves off the agencies.

“What it comes down to is they are not able to recruit and retain within a context of provincial funding austerity, if hospitals themselves don’t have the ability to negotiate more competitive wages and better working conditions. So they’re in a bind in the sense that they have vacancies because wages have not kept pace.”

Michael Hurley, the president of CUPE says the private companies are drawing their employees from the ranks of the public service.

He says nurses have been held to wage increases under the rate of inflation for years by the Ford government. At the same time, they’re working all hours of the day and night.

“Then there’s the possibility of working for a nursing agency where, for example, you can work Monday to Friday, day shift only, and you would be paid two or three times as much. So, there is a gravitational pull there, which is completely understandable,” Hurley said.

He says the province could have avoided this.

“When we look at that $9.2 billion you have to ask yourself, ‘well, could they not have increased nurses wages, you know, in real terms,’” he says. “They could have also contributed other supports. I mean, the fact that there’s not any on-site child care in any of the hospitals in Ontario is like stunning to us.”

Longhurst’s report recommends phasing out private agencies, increasing public sector funding, and developing a Health Workforce Strategy.

Quebec, he says, has already started to phase out the for-profit nursing sector, creating its own staffing agency to help hospitals meet their staffing needs.

While it’s clear at least $9.2 billion is spent on temporary nursing staffing, Longhurst says there is still is a lot which is unknown including if some hospital groups can negotiate better deals that smaller operations. It’s a practice the province wants to outlaw.

“But I would argue the bigger issue is we have a growing dependence on these staffing agencies, and like Quebec, which realized it became such a nasty disease and so costly that they are moving by next year to phase them out and will legislate them out of business in the province.

“That’s the direction that I think Ontario needs to be moving in,” he says.