CALEB NICKERSON
PONTIAC Feb. 10, 2021
Overtime hours at the Pontiac Hospital have more than quadrupled since 2014, and topped a million dollars a year in 2020.
THE EQUITY obtained the information through several access to information requests and it provides a precise picture of just how much chronic short-staffing is costing the regional health authority.
This article will focus on the hospital numbers specifically, but there will be a follow up in the coming weeks examining the region’s long-term care facilities, which this newspaper has previously shown to be in a similar situation.
The numbers for the year 2020 follow a disturbing trend line that THE EQUITY first covered in an article published on Dec. 4, 2019.
Back in 2014, prior to . . .
the reorganization of the province’s health care administration in the so-called “Barrette reforms”, hospital staff logged 5,718 hours of overtime, amounting to $256,958.07. By 2020, those figures had risen sharply to 23,461 hours, costing a staggering $1,158,019.83.
The lion’s share of the hours were logged by nursing staff, from registered nurses and team leaders to orderlies and practical nurses. Laboratory workers and other medical technologists also completed more than 2,000 hours of overtime at a cost of more than $150,000.
THE EQUITY spoke to a source at the hospital with extensive knowledge of the staffing situation. They requested anonymity since they are not cleared to speak to the media by the regional health authority CISSSO. They said they weren’t surprised by the numbers, particularly among the nursing staff.
“It’s not because of the COVID, it’s because [we] still have a lot of vacant positions for [registered nurses] on the floor,” they said. “Somebody has to pick up the overtime.”
The source said that it is often the more experienced nurses and team leaders that have to bear much of the load, but pointed out that authorities have not had to impose mandatory overtime like they have at facilities in the city.
“The ones that do overtime, they’re not pressured into it … We don’t have it hard like they do in the city,” they said. “It’s very, very different.”
The source added that while employees at the hospital have felt the strain of being short-handed, they have done well to pick up the slack.
“Nobody’s off for stress leave, surprisingly nobody’s off,” they said. “The staff’s pretty good.”
The source said that the increase in overtime has definitely been noticeable over the past few years and believes that the main cause of the short-staffing is qualified people either retiring or leaving the region with no one to replace them.
“It’s retirements but it’s mostly people that have left and went elsewhere,” they said. “That’s our big problem now.”
