NBNU recently requested information on the amount of money the two Regional Health Authorities have spent in 2022-2023 on Travel Nurses. The information received, and money being spent in contracts with companies outside New Brunswick who supply travel agency nurses, was astounding.
From October 2022 to March 31, 2023, Horizon spent $5.032 Million. That number ballooned in the 5-month period between April 1, 2023 and August 31, 2023 for a total spend of $22.755 Million.
At the Vitalité health authority, the spend was greater: from July 2022 to March 31, 2023, $19.375 Million was spent. From April 1, 2023 to August 31, 2023, another $34.109 Million was spent.
If added together, the amounts spent in both health authorities from April 1, 2023 to August 31, 2023, totals $56.8 Million, over that 5-month period.
It is little wonder that Finance Minister Ernie Steeves announced recently that the Department of Health “is projected to be over budget by $162 million due to higher operating and personnel costs in regional health authorities” when $56.8 Million is being spent in just five months on Travel Agency Nurses to keep our healthcare facilities afloat.
“New Brunswickers need to know that we have a serious issue right now with staffing in our healthcare system, an even more serious issue when it comes to our government signing off on using taxpayer’s money to pay private-for-profit Travel Agency Nursing companies to fill the staffing holes in our system, and sending our taxpayer money out of New Brunswick,” said Paula Doucet, President of NBNU.
“Here, in New Brunswick, we had never heard of travel nurses 18-24 months ago. We have been talking about the need for educating more nurses, hiring more nurses, and retaining our seasoned nurses for years. This advice has fallen on deaf ears until we are in the eye of the storm. Now we are at the point of having to use travel nurses to even keep some of our hospitals open.”
The average cost per hour for a travel nurse was determined to be $142/hour. Travel nurses also have their expenses, such as travel, accommodations and registration fees paid. An average hourly wage for mid-career nurses in New Brunswick is $45.67/hour.
“The use of travel nurse agencies has to stop,” said Doucet. “We call on this government to immediately commit to halting the use of travel nurse by the end of 2025, similar to the commitment that has been made in neighbouring Quebec. Government should be investing in retention of New Brunswick nurses and recruitment of nurses who are living and working in our province, not in spending high rates for travel nurses on a temporary basis.”
New Brunswickers deserve good quality healthcare, they deserve publicly funded healthcare, and they deserve for their government to be prudent with taxpayers’ money as they provide the services the people of the province need.
“Our government should not ‘be ok’ with using private-for-profit, travel nursing agencies,” concluded Doucet. “For a government that is focused on ‘value for money’, paying travel nurses three times what a salaried New Brunswick nurse earns, makes no sense. Contracting private-for-profit nursing travel agencies, is not a solution and it’s not ‘value for money’. The need to invest in NB Nurses and NB Healthcare is now.”
The New Brunswick Nurses Union (NBNU) is a labour organization of approximately 8500 nurses who are employed in various healthcare facilities throughout the province of New Brunswick.
Media Contact
Jane Matthews-Clark, Communications Officer
[email protected]
(506) 453-7265
