Major growth in B.C.’s use of agency nurses

to another CTV News exclusive one of the most controversial practices in our Health Care system has escalated considerably we’re talking about temporary workers like nurses hired from private agencies as our Penny daf laws reports the cost to taxpayers is exploding a problem the health minister is trying to downplay Frontline staff and many BC hospitals aren’t the unionized public workers we expect to care for us but short-term contractors hired from for-profit staffing agencies for the past 2 years CTV News has been exposing the soaring cost of essentially paying a middleman to provide staff to the public system many of whom have been poached from Health authorities we now know the costs have escalated dramatically from 2018 to partway through 2022 the total was roughly $164 million but the costs have multiplied a whopping 162 million for the last fiscal year alone it’d be nice to make declarations that we’re going to end agency nursing but we have to maintain it as we build out and have all of the recruitment efforts we’re doing in those communities as well the health Minister agreed to an interview before his staff provided those totals in the past the pandemic and the healthc Care Systems need for contact tracing and vaccinations were touted as the causes but it’s now become the norm when CTV News obtained the contracts after our Freedom of Information battle we found nurses can make an extra 30% wage to do the same job through a staffing agency I would call it a parasitic industry because they are really benefiting from um the severe shortages we’re seeing in our Public Health Care System got to keep uh particularly emergency rooms open so we are doing more agency nurses the minister insists they’re trying to reign in spending on those contracted nurses by making union jobs more attractive and cracking down on the staffing agencies we have Frozen the contracts involved and so and the provisions of those contracts which are being uh renewed as we speak ensure that people are working in the health can’t do both which is important for making important changes and Penny joins us so Penny this is costing taxpayers a lot of money so why was this information so hard to obtain I wish I had the answer to that mij Jang I have been asking for it since September and kept getting the runaround clearly they knew the numbers would not look good and it appears that the predictions were correct it is difficult maybe impossible to reverse this trend if nurses can make more money doing the same job some of them will forego a pen in order to have cash in hand right now as well as better working conditions mij okay thank you penny

One of the most controversial practices in B.C.’s health-care system – the use of private agency nurses – has escalated.

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