One year after the Manitoba government hired a staffing agency to bring 150 doctors to work in the province, not a single physician has arrived.
Shared Health, which oversees health-care delivery in the province, said no doctors have been brought over and wouldn’t answer if any recruits are in the queue.
Provincial Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said the lack of progress from recruitment firm Canadian Health Labs (CHL) is unfortunate.
“Obviously it’s disappointing that the previous government signed a contract with a company that hasn’t produced physicians for Manitoba,” Asagwara said.
The province can terminate or delay the contract, according to a redacted copy Radio-Canada received through a freedom of information request, but Asagwara said the government won’t stop the firm from continuing its work.
The government only has to pay Canadian Health Labs if it delivers a physician, and the province would be hit with a financial penalty if it cancelled the deal, the minister said.
Cancelling would cost Manitoba
Asagwara said it’s unfortunate that CHL hasn’t been able to recruit any physicians to date, “but I also want to make sure we’re not throwing good money after bad,” Asagwara said.
“We’re going to continue to assess this agreement while we take real action and real steps to recruit more doctors.”
The as-yet fruitless recruitment drive is a marked departure from the optimism provincial officials expressed at a news conference a year ago Wednesday. At the time, Audrey Gordon, the former Progressive Conservative health minister, said said she was confident Canadian Health Labs would meet its targets.
The contract, which followed a competitive request for proposals process, was designed to recruit 50 physicians in Winnipeg, 50 in northern Manitoba and 50 in other rural communities — all within two years.
Canadian Health Labs is the same firm that’s been the subject of a Globe and Mail investigation into its business practices.
The Globe reported the agency charged other provinces a $300-plus hourly rate for agency nurses — six times what a staff nurse was earning — and invoiced them for daily meal allowances despite telling the nurses to pay for their own food. The company has faced political blowback and its contracts have either been reviewed or investigated in two Atlantic provinces.
The Manitoba deal was signed the same day in July when the Tories publicly announced the “focused recruitment drive.”
“Our government is healing health care by bringing more doctors into the province,” Gordon told a news conference.
The contract was amended a month later to state 10 per cent of the 150 new recruits must be bilingual in French and English.
The Toronto-based recruitment company didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment over the last week regarding its efforts, but said in March it put a “significant amount of work” into recruiting family physicians to Manitoba. The province said at that time it would review CHL’s work but didn’t commit to any specific actions.
A month earlier, Shared Health said the firm has “assigned dedicated recruiters in a number of countries and is planning virtual recruitment events to offer information about physician opportunities in Manitoba.”
Currently on the CHL website, the firm tells physicians interested in the province that “diverse practice opportunities, a high quality of life and the stunning backdrop of Manitoba’s natural beauty” await them.
The website then directs users to a button that takes them to the Tourism Manitoba website.
The Canadian Health Labs’ job board no longer lists any postings in Manitoba, as it previously did, but the company is still offering people who refer physicians willing to travel to Manitoba for work a referral fee of $3,500. It’s unclear if this offer is connected with the firm’s Manitoba doctor-recruitment efforts.
Asagwara wouldn’t answer if they or their office has been in contact with Canadian Health Labs.
Doctor shortage persists
The push to recruit more physicians comes as Manitoba joins jurisdictions across the country in grappling with a doctor shortage that could get worse.
After conducting a survey of its members, Doctors Manitoba warned it could lose one-fifth of its doctors — about 688 — to retirement or relocation within the next three years.
This possibility makes the NDP government’s pledge to bring in 100 additional doctors this year — a spike well above the the usual average — all the more challenging.
Asagwara said Tuesday the government is making headway, including through the establishment of a health-care retention and recruitment office, but wouldn’t share how many doctors have been hired thus far.
Doctors Manitoba hopes the recruitment agency’s limited success doesn’t interfere with the province’s hiring goals.
“We have long advised that the best doctor recruiters out there are our existing doctors, who can most effectively recruit their peers to Manitoba,” spokesperson Keir Johnson said in an email.
“This involves more coordination and support for physician practices trying to recruit, financial incentives to keep us competitive with other provinces and major streamlining of our recruitment and licensure processes.”
The Progressive Conservatives said it is up to the NDP government to administer the contract with Canadian Health Labs, and be accountable for its results.
“After nine months in office, it’s concerning the NDP has not provided details on their own physician recruitment strategy, disclosed the number of doctors they have hired, or created new incentive programs to compete with other jurisdictions working to address and fill health-care shortages across Canada,” spokesperson Matt Preprost said in a statement.
Canadian Health Labs, a staffing agency whose business practices have been scrutinized in other provinces, has failed to recruit any doctors to Manitoba halfway through its two-year contract with the provincial government.