BC Should End Costly Deals with Private Health Staffing Agencies | The Tyee

The B.C. government’s budget missed a huge opportunity to commit to phasing out costly for-profit staffing agencies in health care. Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners The Tyee Is Recruiting Our Next Editor-in-Chief Founding editor David Beers is passing the baton to a new leader. Is it you? CONTEST: See the World Premiere of ‘On Native Land’ One lucky Tyee reader will win tickets to Corey Payette’s new play, a sweeping love story with a focus on urban Indigenous communities. Hospitals and regional health authority services make up about 70 per cent of the health budget, followed by physician services and BC PharmaCare. Although the health-care budget has received healthy annual increases over the last decade, this budget fails to maintain existing service levels. Despite the claims from the usual austerity-minded commentators that the sky is falling and spending needs to be slashed, B.C. has a revenue problem, not an expense problem. The province is a low-tax jurisdiction, with natural resource revenues as a share of GDP lower today than in 1999. The province also has the second-lowest provincial income tax rate for the highest-income earners. This budget brings “hidden austerity” to B.C.’s health-care system. Although the government increases health-care spending in absolute terms, this hides spending cuts in real terms. Regional services, including hospitals and community services, will see only a teeny 0.7 per cent increase in this fiscal year and 2.5 per cent in 2026-27 — far below what is needed to maintain service levels and account for inflation, population growth and aging. An increase of five to six per cent is required to maintain existing service levels. But at the same time that the B.C. budget brings real spending cuts to health care, the government has no concrete plan to phase out waste in the system. For-profit staffing agencies were intended to provide temporary staffing relief, but have become widespread in B.C.’s health system in order to address vacancies and staffing shortages. Health authorities contract these for-profit corporations to supply nurses, medical lab technologists, care aides and many other professions to fill staffing gaps. The use of private, for-profit staffing agencies is a financial drain on publicly funded health-care organizations. The cost to health authorities can be two to three times the cost of hiring regular employed staff. It is also highly corrosive to morale within the health system as regular employees are working alongside agency staff making upwards of 50 per cent more. According to government data obtained by CTV News, public spending on for-profit staffing agencies increased from $8.7 million in 2018-19 to $271.9 million in 2024-25 — an astonishing 31-fold increase over seven years. Some argued that the growth of private staffing agencies would be a short-lived phenomenon related to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the data shows that the greatest spending has been in the last two post-pandemic years. The Pros and Cons of BC’s Rural Health-Care Retention Initiative read more To its credit, the B.C. government has been trying to wean the province off this very costly form of health-care staffing. In 2023, the provincial government created a public sector temporary staffing agency called GoHealth BC. However, to make the in-house alternative viable, the government needs to take the next step by phasing out for-profit agencies — in the same way that Quebec and Manitoba are working towards. But like this most recent provincial budget, the B.C. government seems to have lost steam. The budget opts for austerity-light rather than meeting the moment to tackle the many pressing health, social and environmental challenges we face. Costly private agencies undermine long-term workforce investment in public health care. The use of private agencies is a vicious cycle of parasitic dependence: the more reliant health authorities become on private agencies, the more they will continue to squeeze the health-care budget and hollow out the public sector workforce. RELATED STORIES The Pros and Cons of BC’s Rural Health-Care Retention Initiative At a time when the B.C. government is engaged in public sector spending reviews, a clear plan to rid the province of the scourge of for-profit staffing agencies should be the first order of business. Read more: Health