The study was commissioned by the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions in response to concerns over a growing reliance on temporary nurses
A medical bed in the trauma bay during simulation training at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto on Aug. 13, 2019. Public spending on agency nurses has spiked since 2020-2021, as have the number of hours worked by temporary nurses.Canadian hospitals and nursing homes paid at least $1.5-billion in the past fiscal year – a six-fold increase since 2020 – to for-profit staffing agencies, according to a new report that lays bare the scale of a staffing crisis inside the public-health care system.
That dollar figure is “just the tip of the iceberg,” according to Joan Almost, the Queen’s University nursing professor who led the research. She said the true number could be substantially higher. The taxpayer dollars that are “coming out of the public system and going into the pockets of private agencies is very concerning,” Dr. Almost said. “Think about what could be done with $1.5-billion. It could be used to provide better care. It could be used to actually retain nurses.”
But after COVID-19 spurred an exodus of staff nurses, desperate managers at hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities began using agency nurses more often. The agencies, in turn, raised the hourly rates they charged facilities, and recruited nurses away from the public system, exacerbating the staff shortages.
Dr. Almost said that title was selected because of how little public information about nursing agencies is available beyond media reports such as anthat The Globe and Mail conducted into the industry earlier this year. She used Access to Information Act requests, data from the Canadian Institute of Health Information, and surveys of nursing executives, managers and nurses themselves, among other sources, to assemble the report.
Canada Report Nursing Agency Agencies Information System Queen 'S University University Of Ottawa Saskatchewan
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