Province pauses ban on private nursing agencies

The Manitoba government is temporarily allowing some of the private nursing agencies it cut ties with last week to fill vacant shifts in rural areas like Dauphin and Swan River to maintain safe patient care.

The province previously held contracts with more than 70 private agencies but made the decision to reduce that amount down to four starting on Jan. 15.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said health regions are being supported to manage patient care in real time, which includes the flexibility to temporarily work with agencies beyond those approved through a selection process.

“As with any system-wide change, there can be short-term adjustments as nurses and agencies align with the new approach,” Asagwara said in a statement.

“We expect stability to continue improving as more nurses transition into approved agencies or the provincial travel nurse program.”

The minister did not confirm how long the temporary extension would last, but Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson said it’s until the end of January.

Jackson previously warned Asagwara that cutting nursing agencies would exacerbate staffing shortages at Dauphin and Swan River hospitals, which are heavily dependent on agency nurses.

“Some of the units in those two facilities have a 50 per cent vacancy rate,” Jackson said, adding that she’s hearing from nurses who say the temporary fix is like “putting a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage.”

Jackson said the transition process was “absolutely chaos” and meant nurses in the public sector were mandated to work longer hours and come in on their days off, which led to exhaustion and burn out.

Health-care employers recognize that asking nurses to work overtime every day isn’t beneficial to staff or patients, despite their desperation to find coverage, she said.

“In Swan River they have moved nurses out of some programs, they’ve cancelled some surgeries and moved nurses around the facility to try and staff adequately,” Jackson said.

While the temporary extension provides nurses with some support, Jackson would prefer to see that help come from the provincial travel nurse team, which Manitoba created in response to reducing its reliance on agency nurses.

She said the transition process would have run smoother if more agency nurses switching to work in the provincial float pool were onboarded sooner and if existing vacancies in Prairie Mountain Health were filled.

“It doesn’t take much of a jump to see that this is going to affect some facilities more than others, and that you need to prepare for that,” Jackson said.

“So, I’m a little disappointed that that was not done, and that this government failed to do that.”

Progressive Conservative health critic Kathleen Cook said she’s concerned health facilities are going to be dealing with the same staff shortages they experienced last week when the province goes back to relying on four agencies again.

She said the NDP rushed through the policy before regions like Prairie Mountain Health were properly staffed.

“I think they should have taken a much more gradual approach to this whole policy,” Cook said.

“For example, they could have rolled out these agency restrictions in regions that don’t rely so heavily on agency nurses as a pilot and then rolled it out to other regions when we knew that it was going to work.”

Instead, the Manitoba government gambled on the idea that by forcing agencies out, more nurses would pick up shifts in the public sector or work in the float pool, but it hasn’t been enough, she said.

The provincial travel nurse team has expanded from 280 nurses in December 2024 to 630 nurses, according to the province.

In an effort to reduce its multimillion-dollar spending on agency nurses, the government put out a tender in December 2024, which allowed agencies to bid for the right to work in Manitoba.

Elite Intellicare Staffing, Integra Health, Bayshore HealthCare and Augury Healthcare were selected to offer privatized services.

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 has previously said the region has managed to cut agency costs by 14 per cent so far.

The owner of a Winnipeg-based nursing agency that no longer has contracts with the province, said Prairie Mountain Health started contacting unapproved agencies to come back and work for them 36 hours after dozens of the agencies were let go.

Prairie Mountain Health declined to provide a comment on Wednesday and deferred any questions to the health minister.

The private agency owner, who spoke to the Sun anonymously because he’s worried about retribution from the province, said: “It’s been devastating to a lot of us, knowing that our friends and co-workers that we’ve worked with for years are suffering like they are … and it shouldn’t have happened.”

His agency didn’t submit a proposal, he said, adding that it wasn’t worth it to solely rely on business in Manitoba because the rates paid to agencies “are the lowest in the country” and haven’t changed since 2009.

The agency has up to 120 nurses and 75 health-care aides that work in other provinces like Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia, including some non-goverment contracts in Manitoba. Only one of his former staff has switched over to work for Augury Healthcare, while a few are going through the provincial travel nurse team’s onboarding process, he said.

He told the Sun that nurses like working for private agencies because it can be difficult to find a full-time job in the public system and they have more flexibility to pick up shifts when they want to.

» tadamski@brandonsun.com