B.C.'s health-care crisis: First look at massive markups by 'parasitic' staffing industry

Private staffing agencies stand to make huge profits from British Columbia’s public health-care system, according to exclusive documents obtained by CTV News after a seven-month freedom of information battle.

Private staffing agencies stand to make huge profits from British Columbia’s public health-care system, according to exclusive documents obtained by CTV News after a seven-month freedom of information battle.

The contracts between the province’s health authorities and 16 for-profit companies detail massive markups for the provision of health-care workers – from nurses to X-ray technologists to occupational therapists – who are now propping up the faltering public system. Sources tell CTV News anywhere from a quarter to nearly all the staff in a hospital operating room or care home ward, for example, are there on a short-term contract.

Many of them have left the public system and union pensions to make much higher hourly rates while retaining the ability to choose when and where to work. The agency hires them as temp workers, taking a big slice of the pie for doing so. 

For example, a unionized, health authority worker with a designation as a registered nurse in their first 10 years on the job makes roughly $45 as their base hourly wage. A recent posting from a prominent staffing agency that runs travelnurse.ca posted a week-long request for a surgical nurse in the Lower Mainland offering $52.50 per hour, with “bonus incentives” and unspecified benefits.

All but one of the contracts allows such companies to charge health authorities $75.62 for that same nurse for each hour they work, as well as any travel expenses for those working more than 50 kilometres from where they live. The markup is consistent across professions, and all offer a one per cent credit for each $500,000 spent.

The contracts all appeared to have been re-negotiated last year and are nearly identical except for two. ProMed HR Solutions’ contract has redacted the sections outlining its rates, and Ontario-based Calian Ltd’s contract was radically changed last year: until then, they had been charging $115 per hour for registered nurses provided to Interior Health alone.

Before the pandemic, so-called “travelling nurses” had been predominantly used in rural and remote communities where they would fill-in at smaller health-care facilities to allow for vacations, medical absences and parental leave.