Manitoba taking steps to increase oversight of private nursing agencies, premier says

The Manitoba government wants to have more oversight over private nursing agencies in the province and is taking steps toward that, Premier Wab Kinew says.

The province is issuing a request for proposals for private nursing agencies to become validated by the province, allowing them to work with service providers in Manitoba, Kinew said during his inaugural state of the province address with the Brandon Chamber of Commerce on Thursday.

Nurses have been leaving Manitoba's public health-care system in droves for private agencies amid growing frustrations with things like mandatory overtime, nurse to patient ratios, working conditions and growing violence combined with a lack of scheduling flexibility, Kinew said.

"What it means for our provincial health-care system is we still have to staff these health-centres … but now we're paying [agency nurses] more than ever to do so," he said.

"We're trying to be fiscally responsible … and we're looking at the situation with agencies, and thinking we have to take action."

The province spent $56 million on agency nurses in the first three quarters of the 2023-24 fiscal year, according to preliminary data from Shared Health, of which $21 million was spent in Prairie Mountain Health, the health authority in southwestern Manitoba.

Kinew says that number shows "an increasing reliance on agency nurses" across Prairie Mountain. The province is also hearing concerns about the conditions those nurses are working under, he said.

"One of the anecdotes is a nurse [who] works in one centre, drives to a different centre where they're picking up an agency shift, [and] sleeps in the car on the side of the road in between," he said.

"Do you want to be the patient — or do you want your loved one, your kid, your parent — to be the patient for the nurse that's being run off their feet travelling from one site to the other?"

Manitoba has agreements with 75 different private nursing agencies that were signed by the previous Progressive Conservative government, Kinew said.

He drew a comparison to British Columbia, which has nearly four times the population of Manitoba but just 19 private nursing agencies, he said.

"I think the case is pretty clear that we need to have greater oversight. We need to take some action."

'Necessary,' nurses union president says

Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson says she's pleased by the announcement.

Holding private and for-profit nursing agencies to the same standard as nurses employed in Manitoba's public health-care system "is not only reasonable, but necessary," she said in a Thursday statement to CBC.

A resolution passed at the Manitoba Federation of Labour's annual convention last week pledged that the nurses' union would work in collaboration with the federation to lobby the provincial government to start regulating the use of agency nurses.

Kinew said the work behind Thursday's announcement began before the resolution was passed, but he hopes it addresses the concerns raised by the labour federation and the union.

The province cannot realistically introduce a mandate targeting nursing agencies, he said, because they're being used to keep some of its health-care facilities open.

However, validating agencies means "we'll be able to ensure that there are standards in place, that there are … health and safety regulations being put into place," he said.

"And most importantly…. we're going to start to put an incentive structure in place here in Manitoba that will make the public health-care system that you rely on a more attractive place to work, while also being more self-sustaining from a cost perspective."