Province severs ties with dozens of nursing agencies

WINNIPEG — The Manitoba government has made good on a pledge to curb reliance on private nursing agencies, announcing it has cut ties with dozens of companies that fill staffing gaps within the provincial health system.

As of Jan. 15, the province will permit only four private agencies to satisfy vacant nursing shifts at public health facilities, Shared Health confirmed Tuesday.

Supporters of the move say it will spare the province from spending tens of millions on privatized health care, while critics fear it will drive nurses out of Manitoba — making it even more difficult to fill vacant shifts.

“This is an important step that could have been taken, and should have been taken, years ago,” Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said. “We know that the system that delivers the highest quality and most consistent care is the public system.”

The province launched a request-for-proposal process in December 2024, ultimately awarding Elite Intellicare Staffing, Integra Health, Bayshore HealthCare and Augury Healthcare the sole rights to offer privatized nursing services in Manitoba.

The move marks an end to government relationships with more than 70 other private nursing agencies.

Asagwara said the hope is the nurses working with them will join the approved agencies to operate within Manitoba or, better yet, join the public system.

“What we saw under the previous government was a for-profit, cottage-like industry where agencies were able to make extreme amounts of profit but not deliver the best and most consistent care to Manitobans at the bedside,” Asagwara said.

“It wasn’t sustainable, there were no standards and our government intervened.”

Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson said the reduction has been years in the making, and is a necessary move to bolster public health care.

“This is what we believe needs to happen,” she said. “It just seems that the number of agencies in Manitoba was growing every day … and it became very worrying when we looked at the cost.”

Shared Health data shows spending on private nursing agencies has soared year-over-year, rising from $26.9 million in 2020-21 to $80 million in 2024-25.

As of Oct. 31, Manitoba had spent $34 million on agency nurses in the 2025-26 fiscal year.

Jackson said the money previously spent on private nursing agencies must be reinvested in the public system, including the provincial travel nurse float pool.

She said she hopes nurses who previously worked for private agencies will join the provincial team, but it will be up to the government to recruit and retain them.

“We need to be bolstering our public health-care system, not lining the pockets of private, for-profit businesses,” she said.

In a statement, Shared Health said 555 nurses were working in the pool as of Dec. 31. More than half of them were previously employed by private agencies, and recruitment is ongoing.

The change will also improve accountability and oversight within the health system, Jackson said.

Agencies will be required to employ nurses directly, rather than rely on informal arrangements in which they functioned more like third-party “schedulers,” she said.

Under the new contracts, nurses may work for only one private agency, which will be responsible for ensuring they possess the appropriate training, licensing, experience and qualifications for the health-care setting in which they are working, Shared Health said.

Each regional health authority will hold contracts with a primary, secondary and tertiary nursing agency. When attempting to fill a staffing vacancy, the health region will consult with the agencies in order of priority, contacting the primary agency first before moving down the list until the shift is filled.

The owner of a Manitoba-based private nursing agency, who spoke to the Winnipeg Free Press anonymously because he still holds contracts with the government, said his business has lost about 50 per cent of its profits and up to 200 staff over the past year.

“From what I am hearing, a lot of these nurses are applying to other provinces because Manitoba is trying to restrict them,” he said. “This is going to cause a lot of facilities — especially rural facilities — to struggle.”

He said many nurses prefer to work for private agencies because they want to have more control over their schedules and are free from the “internal politics” of health-care facilities.

The business owner questioned why the government granted contracts mostly to agencies based outside of the province, arguing that local nursing agencies such as his should have been prioritized.

Elite Intellicare Staffing is the lone Manitoba-based nursing agency to secure a government contract.

Asagwara said the agencies were selected via a competitive process, based on criteria established in partnership with health regions and stakeholders.

Progressive Conservative health critic Kathleen Cook said “reducing private-agency nurse costs is a worthy goal” but “can’t come at the expense of patient care, particularly in understaffed regions of the province.”

“I’m not sure that the current NDP government has dealt with any of the reasons that nurses go work for private agencies in the first place,” she said. “This plan seems to be contingent on all of those nurses who worked for agencies taking jobs in the public sector. I don’t know that that’s a given.”

Asagwara countered, saying some nurses who have joined the travel float pool are beginning to take permanent jobs within public facilities.

The minister pointed to the Prairie Mountain Health region as an example of progress.

The province ordered the regional health authority to cut private nurse spending by 15 per cent before March 2026. So far, it has managed to slash costs by 14 per cent, Asagwara said.

» Winnipeg Free Press