Not enough in budget to address crisis in health staffing: unions
The heads of two of the province's largest health care unions say the 2024-25 provincial budget shows a “disappointing ” prioritization on the health sector's biggest needs.
“We do appreciate the increase in health care (funding) but we have been here before. We have seen this before,” said CUPE Local 5430 president Bashir Jalloh after the budget was revealed Wednesday.
Jalloh, also a nuclear medicine technologist in Regina, said the dogged focus on recruitment as a solution to health care's woes is destined to fall flat without equal investment in retention and workplace conditions.
“We are spending a lot of money on trying to be reactive,” Jalloh said. “The priority should be spending that money on the front line, to improve health care in this province.”
Saskatchewan Union of Nurses (SUN) president Tracey Zambory expressed the same disappointment in this budget's spending direction, for the same reasons, and for the second year in a row.
“It's very underwhelming, what we're hearing here, and very disappointing,” she said Thursday. “We call it really a status quo health budget. There's the odd sprinkling here and there of funding, but it's not there to fundamentally address the worst nursing crisis we've had in this province in a decade.”
Inside the $7.6-billion health budget is a $29.2-million increase for the Health Human Resources (HHR) Action Plan and a $30-million increase for the Saskatoon and Regina capacity pressure plans, both pointed to by Health Minister Everett Hindley as “significant investment.”
No ink is given to the creation of a nursing task force that SUN has been pushing for several years, Ambulance Act reforms suggested by paramedics or a homegrown staffing strategy as suggested by Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities.
Also not outlined are any compensation or workplace improvements CUPE wants, a mentorship program for internationally trained nurses to help them settle into Saskatchewan, or retention incentives for nurses already in the province.
The Rural and Remote Recruitment Incentive did receive a boost to become an $8.7-million program, though only nurses who were not already employed by the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) as of 2022 can apply.
“We're really doing ourselves a disservice here, with no incentives at all to retain” career and casual nurses, Zambory argued.
“Their attempt to stabilize the nursing workforce is dwarfed by what we are spending right now on agency nurses.”
SUN says data provided by the SHA on average hours logged in 2023 and early 2024 suggests the province is on track to spend potentially $70 million on private contract nurses this year.
The Globe and Mail reported this February that Saskatchewan spent $45.3 million in 2022 and $12.3 million in 2021 on agency nurses.
The SHA has said the intention is to phase out reliance on contract staff as the HHR action plan fills vacancies. Both Jalloh and Zambory say it's not happening, as more staff are leaving than arriving.
Workforce data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information shows a net 21-per cent decrease in nurses employed in rural or remote positions between 2018 and 2022.
“We've actually done nothing to try and stem the tide of people leaving,” Zambory said. “They're highly skilled and now they're very highly mobile, and they know that they're a scarce resource and that all the provinces are competing for them.”