Rural hospitals continue to rely on private nurses

Five months after the Manitoba government tried to cut ties with most private nursing agencies in the province, it is continuing to let Prairie Mountain Health rely on them to fill vacant shifts in rural areas like Dauphin and Swan River.

The province previously held contracts with more than 70 private agencies but made the decision to allow only four companies to staff vacant nursing shifts at public health facilities, starting Jan. 15.

A week later, the province returned to working with some of the private agencies it dropped in an effort to maintain safe patient care in rural hospitals struggling with staff shortages.

“There was a hard timeline in terms of ending the overreliance on what was an absolutely irresponsible number of for-profit agencies that previously were allowed to become like a cottage type-industry in Manitoba without any parameters,” Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara told the Sun recently.

“What we’ve allowed is for regional health authorities that have some of the hardest to staff sites in Manitoba to maintain relationships where absolutely needed in order to make sure that patient safety is the top priority.”

Asagwara did not say when the province would return to its strict use of the four companies — Elite Intellicare Staffing, Integra Health, Bayshore HealthCare and Augury Healthcare — that were selected through a competitive bidding process.

Last year, the province ordered Prairie Mountain Health to cut its spending on private agency nurses by 15 per cent before March 2026 after its spending soared to $35 million in 2024-25 from $8.1 million in 2020-21.

Asagwara said in April that the health authority had met that goal.

The president of the Manitoba Nurses Union said not much has changed in terms of staffing issues in the last five months.

“We’re certainly encouraging employers to use the provincial travel nurse team before they contact agencies, but I sort of believe that what’s happening with the use of agency (nurses), it’s employers are back to using the number of agencies they used before,” Darlene Jackson said.

The provincial travel nurse team was developed to stabilize staffing in high-priority areas and reduce Manitoba’s dependence on private nursing agencies.

Dauphin and Swan River relied heavily on agency nurses due to staffing challenges and were in “crisis” when dozens of companies were cut, she said.

“Dauphin has very high vacancy rates, which is very concerning because what they need in there are permanent individuals that live and work there,” Jackson said.

“Filling in with sort of interim workers is great for short term, but those facilities, especially Dauphin, they need some serious recruitment done because you cannot function without staff who isn’t there, you know, providing continuity of care all the time.”

She said Dauphin is still using agency nurses to fill the majority of vacant shifts, with some staff filling in from the provincial travel nurse team.

Average annual vacancy rates for nurses in Prairie Mountain Health show a slight decrease from 2024 to 2025, data from an access to information request filed by the Sun show.

The vacancy rate for registered nurses dropped from about 24 per cent in 2024 to 18 per cent last year. The vacancy rate for nurse practitioners decreased from about 26 per cent to 21 per cent and for licensed practical nurses from 32 per cent to 30 per cent within that same period.

Jackson said there are “hot spots” in the Prairie Mountain Health region where the vacancy rates are much higher than the average.

“Prairie Mountain Health is a huge region with many, many worksites, so there are worksites that have very high vacancies that they just can’t fill and other worksites who are doing great,” she said.

Manitoba has had “incredible success” in onboarding about 60 per cent of private agency nurses to the provincial travel nurse team, Asagwara said.

The provincial travel nurse team now has 954 nurses from 280 in December 2024, Shared Health said on Monday.

“Now we’re seeing folks go from leaving private agency, joining the float pool, to taking positions in the public system, which is awesome,” Asagwara said.

The province will continue to use this approach to support regions that are difficult to staff, including areas that have been “almost entirely” staffed by private-agency nurses for more than a decade, they said.

Jackson said she’s unsure how many more nurses need to join the provincial float pool before the province can end its temporary pause on the use of unapproved agencies.

» tadamski@brandonsun.com