By John Chilibeck | The Daily Gleaner
As the pandemic raged, more than 4,000 nursing home staff in New Brunswick called in sick, forcing the province to call in dozens of outside workers to keep them running, says the social development minister.
Jill Green provided the startling figure on Thursday under questioning in the legislature during the committee examining main estimates. The number represents more than half the staff in the province’s 75 licensed homes.
She said that in the six-month period between February and July 2022, during the deadly fifth wave of COVID-19, the province suffered 410 outbreaks in the nursing homes.
The crisis convinced the department to hire companies to bring in workers from outside the province, spending roughly double to four times what it would normally pay staff, to ensure the safety and well-being of vulnerable and elderly residents.
“It was an emergency situation,” said Green, who was not the minister at the time but was recently briefed on the file.
“We talked to a few companies, three to four, to assess the capacity at the time and then we went with the ones that had capacity because we were in an emergency situation with the 410 outbreaks and the many, many staff with positive COVID. So when we found the companies that had capacity, we moved.”
Green said the province followed the Procurement Act that allows exemptions during a crisis, avoiding the need to do a tendering process to hire outside firms.
A four-month deal signed with Canadian Health Labs of Toronto cost taxpayers $2.5 million to bring in 55 workers from out of province.
A second contract, a six-month deal with Plan A of Sudbury, Ont., cost $176,000 to bring in 34 outside employees.
Liberal opposition critic Robert Gauvin, who dug out the information through his questions, told the minister he wouldn’t pass judgment on whether it was a good idea to hire those outside workers.
He just wanted to know why it had been a secret.
“If it was the right thing to do, why didn’t we talk about it during that time?” Gauvin asked the minister. “Why did it only come out from the media and only later on?”
Green replied that no one was trying to hide anything.
“The team was heads down, let’s get the job done, make sure that our seniors and individuals in our special-care homes are getting the care that’s required. And the information was provided to the auditor general when he was doing his review. There was no intent to hide this whatsoever.”
Plan A charged close to $90 an hour for a registered nurse, compared to the average $44 an hour a nursing home pays one of its RNs.
A licensed practical nurse from Plan A cost the province nearly $60 an hour, compared to the $31 on average paid to a local LPN.
Plan A billed the province $40 for an outside personal support worker, as opposed to the $22 an hour paid to a local personal support worker.
Canadian Health Labs was even pricier. Green didn’t have an individual breakdown but based on the math she provided – a team of 10 costing $9,995 for an eight-hour shift – the average pay per worker would have worked out to $125 an hour, billed to the province.
Gauvin said if anything, the emergency showed how valuable nursing home workers are in New Brunswick and the need to pay them enough to retain and recruit more of them.
Further questioning revealed that the province has 241 beds considered “chronically vacant” at a dozen nursing homes that are unable to retain enough staff.
Green admitted those beds were sitting empty, despite 441 seniors in hospital across the province as of March 31, medically discharged but too infirm to go home and waiting for an opening in a nursing home.
Through no fault of their own, those elderly, fragile patients take up acute-care hospital beds that are meant for emergency or surgical patients, jamming up the medical system.
Gauvin said the province needs more people to take care of people, and that the Progressive Conservative government should have put money in this year’s budget to give nursing home workers raises.
The nursing homes association and the workers’ union are in the midst of negotiating a new contract.
“You cannot talk retention without financial incentives, it’s impossible. Money’s not the only thing, but it’s a major thing,” the critic said. “Because we are losing a gold mine of workers, and if they leave, if they find a better situation, they probably won’t come back.”
