Today the MGEU released a new report that takes an in-depth look into the staffing crisis in rural health care and urges aggressive action be taken to attract and retain workers and fix the province’s health care system.
“This government made an election commitment to fix health care. To keep their promise, they must invest in the entire health care team,” said MGEU President Kyle Ross, joined by MGEU health care workers at a media event to launch the report today. “Health care is at its heart about people taking care of people, and no matter how advanced medications and medical equipment gets you can't have health care without health care workers.”
The new report – From Crisis to Stability - Fixing the Staffing Crisis in Manitoba’s Health Care System – illustrates how years of cuts, privatization, and restructuring under the previous provincial government – combined with lasting reverberations of the global pandemic and an aging population – have left Manitoba’s health care system in crisis.
The report shows:
- Health Care Aide vacancy rates are over 30 percent in PMH, including sixteen facilities with vacancy rates over 40 percent.
- There are over 700 vacant health care aide and home care positions in PMH and IERHA.
- Spending on private for-profit agency staffing has spiked from $8.3M in 2021/22 to nearly $30M in 2023/24, with half of those expenditures going to travel costs.
- Staffing levels in facility support and technical / professional classifications have stagnated, while patient needs grow.
- Manitoba’s rapidly growing cohort of seniors are requiring increasing health services and staffing resources.
- Wages across the health care team must improve in order to attract and retain workers in small to medium-sized communities, where employers are struggling to compete with the retail and service industries for workers.
“Spiking vacancy rates have left our public health care system over-reliant on costly agency staffing, compromising patient care. It’s time to end this wasteful and inefficient practice and invest the savings in hiring more public health care providers,” added Ross.
Recommendations to fix health care
To end the staffing crisis and fix health care, the report provides the following ten recommendations:
Recommendation 1: Develop and implement a comprehensive public health care retention strategy for all members of the health care team, not solely focused on nurses and doctors. This strategy must address wage disparities, improve working conditions, and make health care a more appealing career path for both current and prospective health care professionals.
Recommendation 2: Provide an attractive salary / benefits package to recruit more health care providers that encourages the best and brightest to remain in their local communities. Future wage increases must be competitive, staying ahead of the cost of living, while addressing recruitment and retention issues in specific areas experiencing shortages.
Recommendation 3: Immediately begin phasing out private for-profit agency staffing resources. Reallocate these savings to enhance wages for difficult-to-recruit job classifications in the public system.
Recommendation 4: Provide training opportunities for high-vacancy job classifications in more communities and offer tuition incentives to attract more Manitobans to occupations in health care.
Recommendation 5: Expand the number of full-time positions across job classifications for health care members who want to work more hours and provide more service.
Recommendation 6: Legislate staffing ratios aligning with the provincial goal of 4.1 hours of care per day for residents in personal care homes to ensure patients get the quality care they deserve.
Recommendation 7: Improve health and safety for health care workers by investing in workplace injury and illness prevention programs that meet the certification standards of Safe Work Manitoba. Preventing workplace injuries in health care will also require increasing staffing levels in all job classifications, increasing task times in home care, modernizing equipment, and enhancing training.
Recommendation 8: Forge a federal/provincial funding model that invests in a fully public health care system. We strongly urge the Government of Manitoba to dedicate all federal health transfers to the provision of health care services and put an end to unaffordable tax cuts that benefit large corporations and the wealthy.
Recommendation 9: Provide stable funding for health care that addresses inflationary pressures and provides resources to alleviate chronic recruitment and retention challenges.
Recommendation 10: End unnecessary system-wide restructuring exercises and focus on investing in and improving working conditions.