{"id":19448,"date":"2022-08-19T17:28:30","date_gmt":"2022-08-19T21:28:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca\/?p=19448"},"modified":"2022-09-17T17:29:12","modified_gmt":"2022-09-17T21:29:12","slug":"its-corrosive-theyre-price-gouging-agency-staffing-is-costing-hospitals-ltc-homes-critics-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca\/index.php\/its-corrosive-theyre-price-gouging-agency-staffing-is-costing-hospitals-ltc-homes-critics-say\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;It&#8217;s corrosive. They&#8217;re price gouging:&#8217; Agency staffing is costing hospitals, LTC homes, critics say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(August 18, 2022)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By: Joanne Laucius, Ottawa Citizen<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ontario hospitals and LTC homes are filling in workforce gaps with nurses and other workers hired from agencies at a cost of more than two times the hourly rate that staff earn.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The issue was bubbling beneath the surface, particularly in the Toronto area and northern Ontario, but has now come to the forefront province-wide as Ontario wrestles with a health-care staffing crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIf I were making $112 an hour and you were making $45, how do you think that would go over?\u201d said Cathryn Hoy, president of the Ontario Nurses\u2019 Association, which represents more than 68,000 registered nurses and other health professionals.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Staffing agencies have been providing temporary staff to hospitals for years to cover vacancies. But the COVID-19 pandemic has increased reliance on agencies to provide nurses and other workers to cover vacancies will add up to higher costs and has lured workers away from their jobs, nurses\u2019 unions say.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI have spoken to nurses who have been offered $112 an hour to work in the same ICU,\u201d Hoy said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nathalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition, said the network of more than 400 grassroots community organization had advocated against agency staffing for years and was now calling for it to be banned entirely.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt\u2019s corrosive. They\u2019re price-gouging,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions has requested that the Auditor General of Canada, along with her provincial counterparts, conduct an audit of the private companies contracted to fill nursing positions, including the total amount spent and the average pay rates over the past five years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWhere are public dollars going? There\u2019s a complete lack of transparency about how much they are paying agency nurses and how much they\u2019re paying the agency,\u201d said Linda Silas, president of the federation, which has about 200,000 members.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the problems is that there is little public information about how much is being spent on agency staff, and most of it is anecdotal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/drmwarner\/status\/1557722858142433280\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Twitter video<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Dr. Michael Warner, an ICU physician at Michael Garron Hospital in Toronto, said that, prior to COVID, agencies charged hospitals $65 an hour. They now charge $110 an hour, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI think this is exploitative and predatory. There\u2019s one company that even offers surge pricing, whereby, if the shift is booked just prior to when the shift starts, the price goes up to $140 an hour,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The nurse doesn\u2019t keep it all. But the amount they keep is far higher than than they would get with a unionized wage, even when other factors such as vacation pay and pension are factored in, Warner said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Last year agencies were charging twice what staff were earning. It\u2019s more than that now, said Lisa Levin, CEO of AdvantAge Ontario, which represents over 200 municipal and not-for-profit homes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some LTC homes have no other alternative than to use money intended for other purposes to pay for agency staffing, she said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAt the beginning of COVID, agencies helped homes so much. It seems after the first couple of waves, they jacked up the prices. We\u2019ve been hearing a lot about hospitals, but the problem is across the health care system,\u201d Levin said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe agencies are gouging and approaching staff and offering them higher salaries. Our homes are having a much harder time finding people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hoy aims to release figures soon that will offer some insight into the scope of the issue. Hospitals that use agency staffing must pay ONA a penalty. Some cheques are four times what they have been in the past, she said. ONA is gathering hospital-by-hospital information and plans to release it in the next month.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Agency nurses can help in a pinch, but they should only be used as a short-term stopgap, said Ivy Bourgeault, Research Chair in Gender, Diversity and the Professions at the University of Ottawa.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIf you are working right next to someone else, and they\u2019re making more than you, it\u2019s a built-in pay gap. It causes resentment,\u201d Bourgeault said. \u201cIt may solve immediate staffing issues, but it creates long-term resentments in the system.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Solutions to bring people back would include better working conditions, improved workplace culture and support from supervisors, managers and administrators. Nurses face high levels of workplace violence for example, she said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe all thought it was about the pay,\u201d Silas said. \u201cBut it\u2019s about the flexibility and getting away from the politics of a hospital. Agency nurses are not employees. They do their work, they wash their hands and they leave.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Everyone focuses on recruitment, but it is more important to focus retention, Bourgeault said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cYou can\u2019t recruit people in a system that\u2019s bleeding. Why can\u2019t you pay more for the nurses who are there and offer incentives to those who have left?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nurses unions and others argue that that Bill 124, which restricts salary increases to one per cent annually for a three-year period, must be repealed. They also argue at nurses should have wage parity with police officers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Meanwhile, there is a need for a cadre of workers who are mobile. Being part of that mobile workforce should be incentivized, Bourgeault said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There\u2019s also a need to get everyone together at the table to discuss the human resources crisis, she said. Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, recently convened a think tank of stakeholders, she said. It also means finding out what incentives it will take to bring nurses back in.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe need to support them, not vilify them. We need to learn what it would take to bring them back.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In Ottawa, the bridging the staffing gap with agency workers appears to be used less often than it is in other parts of Ontario.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Queensway Carleton Hospital, CHEO and the Montfort Hospital say they have not hired agency nurses. Ottawa\u2019s four municipal nursing homes have also not hired agency nurses or PSWs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A spokesperson for The Ottawa Hospital said it had used a small number of agency hours from the Community Health Registry of Ottawa over the past five years as part of a long-standing agreement for ambulance offload in emergency departments. But, outside of this, the hospital had not procured any agency nursing hours.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Perth and and Smiths Falls District Hospital closed the ER at its Perth site for about three weeks earlier this summer. A couple of agency nurses have been hired, said Dr. Alan Drummond, an emergency room physician at the hospital and co-chair of public affairs with the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Drummond said he wasn\u2019t thrilled with the solution at first, but the nurses had worked out well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWould our emergency room be open without them? Probably not.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Rachel Muir, who heads the Ontario Nurses\u2019 Association unit at the hospital, believes hiring agency nurses is inevitable in Ottawa.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe are so short of nurses and have so many unfilled vacancies there are not enough nurses to safely give the care out patients deserve and there is a significant reluctance to close beds or reduce services currently being provided,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nicole McCallum, a spokesperson for Staffy, a platform that connects health care organizations to pre-vetted workers, said the platform filled last-minute or hard-to-fill shifts like on weekends, holidays or overnight.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The platform was originally developed to connect skilled workers with vacancies, then pivoted to support hospitals, LTC homes and other health organizations responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, McCallum said in a statement.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Surge pricing is not part of the business model. The model is transparent and workers take home 100 per cent of the rate posted. The client is charged a service fee negotiated based on payment and contract terms,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAt a time when our healthcare system is stretched, it is critical that we look to innovation to help fill gaps. Through the Staffy platform we can efficiently and effectively optimize health care workers to fill gaps in staffing across multiple hospitals and other organizations where they are most needed.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Speaking to reporters last week, Premier Doug Ford said he couldn\u2019t control the prices charged by private-sector agencies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cCan I dictate to any private company, should you be paying this to your employees, should you be paying that? I just can\u2019t,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ottawacitizen.com\/news\/local-news\/agency-nurses\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Link to original article<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(August 18, 2022) By: Joanne Laucius, Ottawa Citizen Ontario hospitals and LTC homes are filling in workforce gaps with nurses and other workers hired from agencies at a cost of more than two times the hourly rate that staff earn. The issue was bubbling beneath the surface, particularly in the Toronto area and northern Ontario, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ohc-in-the-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>&#039;It&#039;s corrosive. 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