Auditor general slams travel-nurse contracts, says Vitalité withheld information

New Brunswick's auditor general is criticizing the Vitalité health authority for its handling of $123 million in travel-nurse contracts — and for its refusal to hand over key information about the agreements.

Paul Martin acknowledges in his audit that the health system was facing dire staffing shortages in 2022 when the authority signed its first contract with Canadian Health Labs.

But he says the deployment of travel nurses in Vitalité's hospitals "did not correlate with staff absences due to COVID-19" — one of the main rationales provided for the reliance on travel nurses — or with unplanned staff absences.

"The contracts with private nursing agencies were not reflective of best practices and did not demonstrate value for money," Martin said. 

In a response published as an appendix to his report, Vitalité disputes many of Martin's findings — which Martin in turn rebutted during his appearance Tuesday at the legislature's public accounts committee.

He said given the health authority's pushback, his office was unable to reach conclusions about whether the health authority agreed with the findings.

"We are very concerned with the lack of ownership for the issues identified and unwillingness to clearly accept our recommendations," he said.

The health authority is a large organization spending huge amounts of money to provide health care to New Brunswickers, he said. 

"The oversight and accountability for those funds requires significantly more due diligence than what has been demonstrated to us during our work." 

Martin also found no proper bidding process, no legal review of the contracts and no review before Canadian Health Labs was paid for its travel nurses in long-term care homes under a separate contract with the Department of Social Development, the audit says. 

His audit also criticized Horizon Health's travel-nurse contracts but said it did a better job ensuring that the services it was paying for were delivered.

Martin casts doubt on Vitalité's rationale for its heavy spending on travel nurses: that French-speaking nurses are harder to recruit, which created a more severe shortage at the health authority's facilities, which operate in French.

The auditor general says the contract required that Canadian Health Labs provide only "limited" service in French in some hospitals.

He also says Vitalité refused to give his office three internal audits it conducted itself into its contracts with the company, a violation of the Auditor General Act which says the office is entitled to "free access" to all documents whether they're confidential or not.