Hamilton hospital staffing shortages have tripled in under a year
Hamilton's hospitals are short more than 2,000 staff.
The unprecedented crisis has nearly tripled in under a year from 675 vacancies at Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) and St. Joseph's Healthcare in July 2022.
Now, St. Joseph's alone has 632 job openings - 364 of them in nursing.
HHS has about 1,400 vacancies, which is an improvement from more than 1,500 open jobs in January.
We're continuing to aggressively recruit and train new staff," HHS said in a statement Wednesday.
HHS started paying nurses double in August to work outside of their regularly scheduled shifts to fill critical staff shortages.
Despite the shortfalls being much worse now, the hospital network will start phasing out the measure April 5 and end it altogether on May 17.
HHS said in a statement the model was implemented as a temporary, time-limited measure in agreement with our union partners to address intense staffing pressures and demand for care."
But it's time to end it because this is not a sustainable practice for managing staffing pressures long-term."
HHS didn't provide information on how often staff were working on their days off, but the program cost the hospital network $2.2 million as of March 3.
HHS will now go back to using the terms set out in the collective agreement for overtime.
Over the pandemic, both St. Joseph's and HHS started using nurses from agencies that provide temporary staff - a last-resort measure neither had relied on for many years before that.
HHS spent $681,000 on agency nurses from October 2021 to Feb. 17, 2023 - less than one per cent of all paid nursing hours.
St. Joseph's has also used agencies to fill gaps as it increased its reliance on personal support workers (PSWs) - particularly to staff the Satellite Health Facility at 150 King St. E. downtown in the former Crowne Plaza Hotel.
Agency PSWs cost St. Joseph's $9.7 million in the fiscal year that ran from April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022 compared to $3.1 million before the pandemic.
While a large increase, the cost for agency PSWs continues to represent a small portion of the total labour compensation costs at St. Joe's, and is necessary," the hospital network said in a statement.
HHS also uses the Satellite Health Facility, but so far hasn't required agency PSWs to staff it.
Joanna Frketich is a health reporter at The Spectator. jfrketich@thespec.com