Ontario hospitals spent greater than $9 billion on nurses and different workers from for-profit businesses in a 10-year interval, a brand new research concludes.
The Canadian Centre for Coverage Options research, launched Monday, examined monetary statements for 134 Ontario hospital companies in addition to information from the Canadian Institute for Well being Data.
It discovered that from 2013-14 to 2022-23 public hospital spending on workers elevated six per cent, however their spending on personal businesses elevated 98 per cent.
Research creator Andrew Longhurst additionally discovered that whereas the variety of hours labored by company workers in Ontario hospitals accounted for 0.4 per cent of all front-line employee hours in 2022-23, six per cent of hospitals’ labour prices went towards the personal workers.
“So we’re seeing a very poor worth for cash when it comes to what Ontario taxpayers are getting in return,” Longhurst stated in an interview.
“What we’re seeing is that the expansion in personal company workers is admittedly crowding out hospital budgets and their means to make investments within the long-term workforce.”
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Hospitals flip to staffing businesses for certified staff that may fill shifts on a brief foundation, however businesses cost double and even triple the common hourly fee for his or her workers and hospitals wish to scale back their reliance on them.
Longhurst recommends phasing out staffing businesses over three years and in the end banning them, as Quebec has got down to do.
Ontario lately re-introduced laws – which was initially tabled in late 2024 however was not handed earlier than the provincial election was known as – that may require businesses to report billing or pay fee info and would permit the federal government to publish a few of these particulars.
Some critics and advocates hope it’s a small step towards reducing and regulating company charges, although Well being Minister Sylvia Jones has not dedicated to that.
The growing use of staffing businesses additionally doesn’t seem like fixing the issue of staffing shortages, Longhurst stated. He additionally discovered that from 2015 to 2024 the variety of hospital job vacancies in Ontario elevated by 331 per cent.
“The better reliance and the elevated spending on personal businesses is admittedly simply driving hospital job vacancies,” he stated.
“You’re hollowing out your public sector workforce, as a result of these people which are transferring into company work are not accessible to be employed as everlasting staff.”
Longhurst additionally recommends the province enhance hospital base funding to the tune of $2 billion.
Rural and northern hospitals particularly depend on company workers, and Longhurst’s research exhibits the problem of related value has turn out to be extra acute for them.
Whereas in 2013-14 most hospital areas within the province spent round three per cent of their whole front-line labour prices on company workers – together with 3.7 per cent within the northwest area – by 2022-23 that had risen to 17 per cent.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
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