Manitoba government bets big on nurses’ forgiveness

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/02/2023 (931 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It may be exactly the right plan, but it may have come at precisely the wrong time.

Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative government announced Friday it is pulling out all the stops to retain and recruit public health-care nurses, with a $123-million package of incentives.

It’s impressive, but, by all reasonable measurements, Health Minister Audrey Gordon is desperately behind the original schedule she and her department set for delivering an action plan.

On Oct. 25, Gordon promised a “comprehensive” recruitment and retention strategy would be “rolling out in the next week or so.” Flash-forward four months, and Gordon has finally fulfilled her pledge, albeit in a rather vague fashion.

Although the total price tag was unveiled, there were no details on exactly how much money would be available to nurses in each of nine recruitment and retention initiatives.

Given we’re already four months late on the minister’s original pledge, and most other provinces have been offering similar incentives for a year or more, there is reason to be concerned this will be — lamentably — too little and too late to solve the nursing shortage.

Why is the province so far behind?

Political sources claim a conflict between Premier Heather Stefanson and former finance minister Cameron Friesen was part of the problem, with the former wanting to splash money around the health-care system in a very public way, and the latter preferring to cut taxes and reduce the budget deficit.

Tories may deny this conflict, but there is no escaping the fact while the pre-existing nursing shortage grew worse during the COVID-19 pandemic, the PC government opted to instead deliver hundreds of millions of dollars in tax cuts.

It’s also likely significant staffing cuts to regional health authorities have left the health-care system unable to deploy new strategies.

An example of this could be seen in December, when the province unveiled its Virtual Emergency Care and Transfer Resource Service to better manage inter-facility patient transfers from rural facilities. It’s an excellent idea that took — wait for it — six years to implement.

It should be noted, pending details on the exact sums of money involved, the retention and recruitment plan does seem to address specific issues. There is strong evidence the PC government may have finally listened to nurses about what they really wanted.

Compared to the delay in approving VECTRS, the nursing strategy seems to have moved at a lightning pace.

It should be noted, pending details on the exact sums of money involved, the retention and recruitment plan does seem to address specific issues. There is strong evidence the PC government may have finally listened to nurses about what they really wanted.

There are wage premiums for nurses working weekends, and new resources to cover nurses licensing fees, and to keep or lure back nurses who are at or past retirement age. The plan also includes incentives for travel to fill vacancies in under-served communities, and a new “float pool” to move nurses to facilities most in need.

Most importantly, the new plan includes an annual bonus for nurses willing to work full-time hours. This is a critically important offer to the nursing profession, where it has become increasingly common for nurses to work less than full-time hours.

All these gestures are correctly aimed at stopping and perhaps reversing the flow of nurses who have left the public system for private agencies, where they get paid better and have greater control over their schedules.

The big question: will it work?

This is where the plan starts to unravel.

Regional health authorities currently spend almost $4 million a month to hire private agency nurses to fill staffing holes. Nurses that were largely trained and developed in the public system.

It is hardly a Manitoba phenomenon, but under the PC government, there has been a rapidly escalating reliance on private agencies.

In the last complete fiscal year (2021-22), Manitoba spent $41 million on private agency nurses. That’s up from $13.3 million annually when the PCs took over in 2016. It’s expected to go up even more in the 2022-23 fiscal year that ends March 31.

Can any amount of money reverse this trend?

Underlying the offer to nurses is the first-hand knowledge that, for much of the last seven years, the PC government did not pause to ask nurses what they thought about changes to the health-care system.

Many who’ve left the public system are still smarting from the bully tactics used in the reorganization of Winnipeg hospitals. After closing three emergency departments and shuffling speciality programs, nurses were confronted with the the prospect of working different schedules at different hospitals.

The PCs essentially wagered nurses would give in when faced with the my-way-or-the-highway prospect of losing their jobs if they didn’t move. It was, as it turned out, a sucker bet.

After being ignored and bullied for years, will nurses forgive the PC government, accept the incentives being offered and return to the public system?

For the Stefanson government, that is the $123-million question.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca