MARATHON – North of Superior Health Care Group CEO Adam Brown provided an update to the Marathon town council at its regular meeting on Oct. 11. Brown put forth troubling news, saying the organization is significantly short-staffed.
“Currently staffing is a challenge, full stop,” said Brown “In fact, we just went through an exercise all afternoon to figure out how to staff our facility tonight and tomorrow and some of the other times during the week. We are constantly short of nurses in our community.”
Brown said NOSH currently employs six agency contract nursing staff through three different agencies and those staff members are dispersed to five local retirement homes throughout the community.
“Going forward it is not going to get easier,” explains Brown. “We are all feeling it as employers in our communities in developed countries. That tells me that in the next two years we’ll have an additional 10 per cent of our staff that are retiring and if we look at another five years another 10 per cent will be retiring. So, we’ll have 20 per cent of our staff retired in the next five years.”
Moreover, Brown told council that NOSH is experiencing a high turnover rate as staff move away from the community to seek advanced educational or other industry job opportunities.
“That turnover is ridiculously and unsustainably high at 25 per cent per year,” said Brown. “So, we are turning over in our whole NOSH, which has 200 employees including Terrace Bay, 50 employees a year.”
NOSH has incentive programs for retention and recruitment, Brown said, but their budget doesn’t allow the organization to offer much compensation.
NOSH provides RPN classes through a programs in which six out of ten students in the program are from Marathon working outside of the community in Terrace Bay, and Brown is hopeful that 100 per cent of those RPN students will return to their home community once they graduate next year.
NOSH also works with educational institutions like Lakehead University, NOSM, and Confederation College to build partnerships that will provide placement opportunities and employment of summer students “above and beyond what we get funding for,” said Brown.
Lastly, NOSH discloses that they also employ contact employment for locum staff.
“Without giving away any contract details, we are paying well over $100 per hour for these agency staff,” said Brown. “Plus transportation, plus accommodation, plus, plus, plus. So, it is absolutely an unsustainable policy moving forwards.”
Brown said changing the situation will require municipal advocacy.
“There are two pieces of government policy in particular that are barriers for us,” said Brown. “Bill 124, which restricts wage increases to one per cent in our industry for unionized workers. One per cent does not keep up with eight per cent inflation very well and is a long-term challenge that's driving people away from the industry and non-incentivizing young folk to get into the industry.
"The Public Sector Executive Compensation Act is restricting wage increase to zero per cent for non-union designated executives.”
To take part in the advocacy for the end of Bill 124 and the Public Sector Executive Compensation Act,
Mayor Rick Dumas advised Brown to put the request to advocate against Bill 124 and the Public Sector Executive Compensation Act in writing, so he could bring the request to the Northern Ontario Municipal Association (NOMA) for consideration.