While the province tries to rein in the soaring costs of private agency nurses, spending on private health-care aides has also skyrocketed.
Freedom of information requests show spending on private agency health-care aides is way up in at least two Manitoba health regions.
The Interlake-Eastern Health region spent $8.7 million on private health-care aides in 2023-24, more than double the $3.4 million spent in 2021-22. The Prairie Mountain Health region spent almost $14.8 million for the first nine months of the 2022-23 fiscal year, nearly triple the $4.8 million spent in 2021-22.
Nearly half of what the Prairie Mountain region spent on agencies went toward travel costs, said Kyle Ross, president of the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union that filed the freedom of information requests.
The government would be better off raising wages to fill the vacant public-sector positions and hire locals than spending on “temps” from a for-profit agency, Ross said.
“It’s really kind of a frustrating thing when you think of all these dollars that are being spent to support these rural areas,” said Ross.
Those tax dollars could be flowing back into local economies if public-sector aides were being paid for work in their own community, Ross said.
“We know in Prairie Mountain there’s a 30 per cent vacancy rate in health-care aides and there’s other large vacancies across the regions we represent.”
The MGEU represents 587 health-care aides in Interlake-Eastern and 1,407 in Prairie Mountain.
Health-care aides work in hospitals, personal care homes, assisted living facilities and in home care.
The government has a hard time recruiting health-care aides because the wages are not competitive, the union head said.
The standard hourly starting wage for MGEU’s health-care aides is $20.09. Their contract expired at the end of March and they’re involved in collecting bargaining, Ross said.
Public-sector health-care aide jobs are no longer as well-paying or “coveted” as they once were, he said.
“In some cases, we’re competing against fast food places,” Ross said.
“We need these jobs to be treated with the respect that they deserve. They’re vital to our society and yet we’re competing right now with McDonald’s.
“It’s not the most glamorous job. It’s a difficult job. It takes a lot of patience, a certain type of people and we have to be able to entice them to come to the system. I think there’s a lot of work to be done in that area.”
Manitoba’s minimum wage is $15.30 per hour.
The Interlake-Eastern Health region said Friday its recruiting efforts are working and that the vacancy rate for health-care aides has been falling since December.
In long term and acute care, the health-care aide job vacancy rate was almost eight per cent, down from nearly 12 per cent in December.
In home care, the vacancy rate has dropped to 15.6 per cent from 21 per cent in December.
Since last June, Interlake-Eastern Health has trained 65 health-care aides through its community-delivered micro-credential program, with graduates offered positions in long-term care and home care.
Prairie Mountain Health did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
Ross said the union raised its concerns about health-care aide vacancies and the increased spending on private agencies with Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara earlier this year.
Meanwhile, the province is trying to reduce its reliance on private agency nurses that cost the it $56 million in the first three quarters of 2023-24 — an expense that’s tripled in the last three years. Its vowed to shift spending from for-profit agencies to the public health system.
A tentative deal with the Manitoba Nurses Union includes employers committing to make “best efforts to minimize to the greatest degree possible” the use of nurses employed by outside agencies to fill occasional shifts. It’s offering private agency nurses incentives to return to the public health system and disincentives that prevent them from working for both public sector and private employers.
The government did not respond Friday when asked if it planned to reduce its reliance on private agency health-care aides.
carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter
Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.
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