Ending travel nurse contracts early 'very unlikely': Vitalité

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The province’s hope that travel nurse contracts signed by Vitalité during the pandemic might end early is “very unlikely” and “purely speculation,” according to the two most senior members of the network’s board of directors.

Doing so would require incredibly tough decisions because Vitalité needs time to enact its “very aggressive hiring plan,” board chair Tom Soucy and vice-chair Réjean Després told Brunswick News on Wednesday.

They’re the leaders of Vitalité’s new board, which was appointed by the province last summer.

The travel nurse contracts – signed by Vitalité and Horizon in 2022 to keep the health system running as pandemic staff shortages climbed – are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Vitalité has three active travel nurse contracts. The biggest, with Ontario-based Canadian Health Labs (CHL), doesn’t expire until February 2026. 

When the contracts were signed, a few months after Premier Blaine Higgs fired the elected boards, the province had assigned trustees to oversee Horizon and Vitalité. The new board wasn’t in place; the trustees and senior Horizon and Vitalité executives inked the travel nurse contracts. 

Several other provinces, including Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador, signed similar contracts. In some instances, the companies providing the nurses are being paid more than $300 an hour per nurse.

Spending on travel nurses was a topic of discussion after the government released its 2024-2025 budget.

While talking about the province’s $3.8-billion spending plan, Health Minister Bruce Fitch denied that the year-over-year spending increase was only about $1.7 million. That is, however, the difference between what was actually spent last year and what’s being forecast to be spent this fiscal year.

Fitch, however, said the correct comparison should be between what the department thought it would spend last year and what it thinks it will spend this year. The difference between those two numbers is about $214 million, which is the number the government is using.

In part, Fitch rationalized his math by saying that the province will spend less on “one-off” payments this year, including the travel nurse contract signed by Horizon Health Network, which will expire soon. He also mentioned Vitalité’s contracts, but acknowledged that their expiry dates are further off.

Soucy and Després said when the contracts were signed, Vitalité needed travel nurses to keep the network running and avoid closing hospitals – and still does.

“We did not have the service, we did not have the people. We needed to provide the people, and that was the cost of providing the people until we could get ourselves aligned with a more aggressive hiring strategy, a more aggressive retention strategy,” Soucy said. 

“This would never have been our first choice, to have contracted employees that were not employees of the network,” added Després. 

He later added that travel nurses aren’t taking work away from full-time employees, but rather that they’re “filling a gap so the network is safe, and so people are getting the care that they should be getting.”

“We have a very aggressive hiring plan, within the pool of people that we have and that we can hire into,” said Soucy. “And we will do everything to get out of that contract by 2026. But to say that we’re going to be able to get out of it sooner, I think is purely speculation and very unlikely.”

Told of those comments, Fitch didn’t disagree.

“They’ve got their allotment for this year and we’re hopeful that they can manage within that allotment, and come as close as they can to that budget,” he said. “We’re in constant contact. That’s part of the ongoing work that we can do.”

Pressed to answer about Soucy’s reference to 2026, Fitch said he realizes “it’s one of those double-edged swords.”

“People need to keep the services going, they need to keep the beds open, the clinics open, the emergency rooms open, and there is a need for travel nurses, especially when we don’t have the permanent nurses there.”

That’s why it’s important that Vitalité works hard to keep any “overexpenditures” on travel nurses “to a minimum,” he said.