Health authorities spent $100M on travel nurse contracts in past year: documents

Newfoundland and Labrador's regional health authorities have spent around$100 million on private agency nurse contracts in the past year, according to numbers obtained by CBC News.

On Wednesday, Newfoundland and Labrador's opposition parties said the eight contracts, obtained through an access-to-information request and first reported by online news outlet allNewfoundlandLabrador, show that the government's recruitment efforts aren't working.

PC health critic Paul Dinn called the figures "astounding."

"That gives you a huge indication of how serious the issue here is in the province in terms of recruiting nurses," he said after question period Wednesday at Confederation Building.

He contrasted the money with the the provincial government's recent announcement ofa $3,000 retention bonus for the province's nurses.

"And then you're turning around and you're bringing in travel nurses at $100 million? That's astounding. That's astounding," he said. "So when you hear nurses talk about being disrespected, I can appreciate where it's coming from."

Dinn said travel nurses are needed to fill some gaps in the system.

"I think this mainly helped in giving nurses some time off, but at the end of the day, $100 million potentially? That's a huge chunk of change."

Of the eight contracts, seven are with the Central Health or Western Health authorities:

• Canadian Health Labs, Toronto, $28.3 million for a one-year contract with Central Health, awarded April 30.
• Canadian Health Labs, $16million for a one-year contract with Central Health, awarded May 1.
• Canadian Health Labs, $13.5 million for a one-year contract with Western Health, awarded Feb. 27.
• Canadian Health Labs, $13.5 million for a seven-month contract with Western Health, awarded July 4.
• Northern Medical, Halifax, $10 million for a two-year contract with Central Health, awarded Dec. 19.
• Northern Medical, $8 million for a two-year contract with Western Health, awarded Jan. 3.
• Goodwill Staffing, Ottawa, $8 million for a five-month contract with Western Health, awarded Nov. 1.

An eighth contract, with Goodwill Staffing, awarded April 22, is for one year but the contract price is listed as "unknown." None of the contracts include provincial tax.

Not including tax, and not including the "unknown" Eastern Health contract, the total works out to more than a quarter-million dollars $266,438.36 per day, every day, spent on travel nurses since April 2022.

NDPLeader Jim Dinnsuggested that at least some of the $100 million could have been used to improve provincial retention.

"That's money that's just gone in from taxpayers to agencies outside the province to attract nurses away from the public health-care system here to work for them. I can't even ... how screwed up is that?" he said.

He compared it to spending money on fast food.

"It's easy, quick, easy, not much in the way of calories, probably going to create more health problems for you down the road," he said. "There's something terrible wrong here, folks."

WATCH | NDP Leader Jim Dinn says the provincial government is relying too much on travel nurses:

NDP criticizes N.L. spending $100M on nursing agencies

1 year ago

Duration 1:49

Jim Dinn says "there's something terribly wrong" with using outside agencies to fix the province's crumbling public health system.

Health Minister Tom Osborne said earlier Wednesday that the money is spent by the regional health authorities when they need to address staffing shortages. Amalgamating the health authorities will make it easier to track spending, he said.

"I do understand the need for the four health authorities to have contracted nurses if they had shortages of staff," he said.

"We are looking forward to a day that the province is no longer reliant on agency nurses, that we have a stabilized workforce, and I think every province in Canada will tell you the same thing and, you know,the nurses that are working with the agencies, at that point, will migrate back to working in a health authority in one of the provinces."

Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador