Nursing Shortage In Southeast

Three months are in the books and South Eastman Health remains on target to end the year with a $1.1 million deficit. That's what the board approved earlier this year and Chief Executive Officer John Stinson says "luckily we have reserve funds that will be able to cover that off. We're on track and that's still our prediction for the year end."

Stinson notes one thing they noticed in the first quarter is they're spending a lot of money on overtime costs and relief costs associated to nursing. "We want to try to control that trend and see how we can do but there is a real recruitment challenge right now with nursing, so we expect that those costs will continue to escalate and that may have some impact on our bottom line at the end of the year."

Stinson says the main thing is, they've kept their emergency departments open by nurses agreeing to work a double shift or provide relief work. "But to be perfectly honest, in some of our minimally staffed facilities, we're a sick call away from having to redirect emergency services that night. It wouldn't be that they'd be redirected forever but we're on high alert to ensure we have the appropriate staff in place and if we don't we'd have to redirect service."

At last week's board meeting, it was mentioned the average number of years of service for a South Eastman Health employee is considerably lower than other Regional Health Authorities. Stinson says there are a couple of reasons for that. "One is, on the sad side of that equation, is our proximity to Winnipeg and opportunities that come up in Winnipeg and then people pursuing different jobs and you know particularly if they're looking for that opportunity to work in real high volume acuity or surgery, you know they want to be where the big show is and that happens. But the other reality for us is we're growing. So we're always hiring new people. Because we're hiring new people all the time, that skews the statistic and makes it look like people stay here for a shorter period of time."