Nova Scotia spent $45M on 'travel nurses' in long-term care over 18 months

A top government official told Nova Scotia’s standing committee on health Tuesday that a “significant deficit” of long-term care staff led to the province paying $30 million to so-called “travel nurses” to fill gaps in long-term care.

“Travel nurses have absolutely been a necessity while we ensure that we’ve got beds open in the nursing homes in the province so that people who are waiting at home can get into a facility,” said Tracey Barbrick, associate deputy minister of the Department of Seniors and Long-Term Care.

After the meeting, a department staffer corrected that figure, updating the cost to $45 million since the fall of 2021.

The dollar amount was news to union leaders at the meeting who represent the majority of the province’s long-term care workers.

“That’s not including acute care,” said Nova Scotia Nurses' Union president Janet Hazelton. “I was just shocked that it’s that much."

Nan McFadgen, president of CUPE Nova Scotia, said travel nurses are “not the answer.”

“We want our nurses living in community,” said McFadgen. “We want them to have work/life balance.”

Barbrick told the committee there are about 100 travel nurses in Nova Scotia right now.

“Travel nurses” work for contract agencies for hourly wages above what is made by continuing care assistants [CCAs], licensed practical nurses [LPNs], and registered nurses [RNs] in Nova Scotia. But they don’t receive benefits or job security from the provinces they work in.

Barbrick insisted Tuesday using travel nurses has been a short-term way to keep long-term care beds open and available, while the province waits for more continuing care assistants to graduate into the workforce.

“We have a thousand CCAs coming out this first year, a thousand next year. It would be my hope that we're tapering off into year two and travel nurses go away,” she says.

As part of the Tim Houston government’s action plan for health care, the province has promised to ensure residents at all of Nova Scotia’s licensed long-term care facilities receive an average of 4.1 hours of hands-on, direct care every day -- a standard Barbrick says is being met at 48 per cent of facilities.

“Four-point-one for Nova Scotia reflects three hours of CCA and one-point-one hour of LPN and RN time,” she said. “We are the only province in the country other than the Yukon that has made that commitment.”

But union leaders say the 4.1 figure is outdated by about 15 years.

“It's nowhere near what's required,” McFadgen told the committee. “So that we don’t see a repeat of what we saw [during COVID-19], which was 17,000 seniors that died from COVID in long-term care facilities across Canada.”

McFadgen explained to the committee what happens in a system she described as “chronically understaffed.”

“When someone’s waiting a half-an-hour to go to the washroom, how does anybody feel good about that?” she said. “Maybe you’re lying in bed waiting to get up for breakfast, maybe you’re 80 and you’ve laid there waiting two hours to go for breakfast.”

“Most of us get a shower every day,” she added. “Residents get a shower a week.”

Getting the level of care where it needs to be, union leaders suggested, could come by using funds from the recent health-care funding agreement with Ottawa.

“Long-term care has always been the poor second cousin, and it can't be any longer,” said Hazelton. “We've seen through COVID what happens when we neglect residents in long-term care.”

When asked whether any of the funds from Nova Scotia’s next bilateral agreement with Ottawa will be earmarked for long-term care, Barbrick said she couldn’t comment, “until that negotiation with the federal government is complete.”