Vitalité Health Network says it is over budget by nearly $98 million for the first 11 months of the 2023-2024 fiscal year, mainly due to expenses related to traveling nurses.
The hiring of 190 full-time equivalent employees in private agencies represented $94.2 million in cost overruns between April 1, 2023 and February 29, 2024, according to vice-president Réjean Després.
This represents around 12 percent of Vitalité’s budget.
“These costs do not have to do with luxury spending,” said Després, who presented the figures as part of Vitalité's quarterly report at the public board meeting in Campbellton on Tuesday.
Travel nurses were needed to maintain patient services while supporting healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.
Seeking to have a provincial foot bill
Dr. France Desrosiers, president and CEO of Vitalité, said discussions are underway for the province to foot the bill.
“According to the latest news, the money must come from the Ministry of Health,” she told journalists in French after Tuesday's meeting.
The ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.
But a Vitalité spokesperson told CBC News on Wednesday that the ministry has been “funding these cost overruns since the 2022-2023 fiscal year.”
The contracts that Vitalité had between July 2022 and March 2023 were with four agencies: Canadian Health Labs, People2.0 Workforce Services Canada, Goodwill Staffing & Recruitment and Agence SPI.
The cost of these contracts amounts to more than $19 million, according to figures provided by the regional health authority.
Horizon did not respond to a request for information about its nursing travel cost overruns or any discussions with the ministry to absorb those costs.
Verification in progress
Nursing unions and opposition parties have criticizedthe use of traveling nurses in New Brunswick, costing taxpayers millions of dollars. A Globe and Mail investigation found that agencies such as Toronto-based Canadian Health Labs charged rates of more than $300 an hour, about six times what a local nurse makes.
Deputy Health Minister Eric Beaulieu told a legislative committee in February that the government was aware of Vitalité's first contract, which was worth up to $20 million. He was informed of the other two after the factat the end of the 2022-23 fiscal year, he said.
Last month, Auditor General Paul Martin announced he had launched an investigationon travel nurse contracts with the Vitalité, Horizon health networks and the ministries of Health and Social Development.
“I still use them like it’s the first day”
Paula Doucet, president of the New Brunswick Nurses Union, doesn't believe the province should pay for any cost overruns caused by traveling nurses.
Although the need might have been urgent at the height of the pandemic, “here we are two years later and they're still using them like it's day one,” she said.
Doucet blames a lack of planning and many years of not heeding the union's warnings about a looming nursing shortage.
“And now we find ourselves using taxpayer dollars for the last two years to hire private, for-profit companies to provide registered nurses and licensed practical nurses to keep our health care system afloat. “
Reduction in needs expected by September
Vitalité plans to phase out the use of travel nurses by winter 2026, when the last and largest of its current contracts, with Canadian health laboratories, worth a cap of $93 million, expire.
It has six private agency contracts for 2023-24, with the same agencies as in 2022-23, according to the spokesperson.
“The number of nurses to be provided varies by contract and is based on our needs to maintain hospital services. The cost is based on the number of travel nurses provided.”
Some of the strategies put in place by Vitalité should start producing results by next September, Desrosiers told CBC News. These include changes around models of care – introducing new types of professions into teams to reduce the number of nurses needed, as well as recruitment and retention initiatives.
Health Minister Bruce Fitch said his ministry was working with Vitalité to try to find ways to reduce its need for travel nurses and increase recruitment.
“Many missions have taken place recently to find people to replace these travel nurses,” especially in places where French is more present, such as France, Morocco, Belgium, he explained.
Although Horizon plans to stop using travel nurses “in the very not too distant future,” according to Fitch, it could be more difficult for Vitalité because there are fewer French-speaking nurses available, it said.
Vitalité also has vacancies in northern communities, which “are a little more difficult to recruit,” he explained.
“We're working together. We're trying to find a way forward. There's still work to do, but we're moving in that direction.”
The union president argues that if Vitalité is at a recruiting disadvantage due to language, it should invest in helping local English-speaking nurses become bilingual.
When Doucet began her career many years ago at Chaleur Regional Hospital, French language training was offered at the hospital, she said. “It worked,” but “they removed that.”
Vitalité does indeed offer French lessons “by telephone”, but it is “not the same thing”, she says.
Minister impatiently awaits first quarter results
It would be “impossible to completely do without (travel nurses) at the moment“, Desrosiers said in a recent statement, “given the immediate needs which are still as important as they were in 2022”, when Vitalité began using them.
The staffing situation was “critical” due to departures and early retirements during the COVID-19 pandemic – “to the point where we were facing imminent closures of emergency departments and even facilities,” he said. -she declared.
“This temporary but necessary measure allowed us to save lives and relieve our staff by reducing exhaustion and team turnover.”
The province allocated a An additional $70 million for regional health authorities in the 2024-25 budget to “help stabilize and alleviate pressures”.
Fitch said it is “looking forward to the first and second quarter results, just to see if there is a way to stay within budget without negatively impacting the clinical side of it.”
Vitalité's remaining $3.6 million operating deficit for the first 11 months of 2023-2024 is mainly due to expenses related to small equipment and professional services in laboratory, pharmacy and infrastructure, Després said during of the board of directors meeting.
“These were unforeseen but urgent expenses,” he said. No further details were provided.
