The road to providing a solution to the staffing crisis in Ontario has led to a plan by the Ontario Government to fund nursing homes to hire more workers, with the aim for each resident to receive an average of four hours of daily hands-on care by March 31, 2025.
Staffing agencies offer support and are a solution to meeting this target, by supplementing the nursing homes and hospitals with registered staff. However, some of the concerns that have been raised to prevent the reach of this target are surrounding malpractices of some staffing agencies.
According to Dr. Adil Shamji a former emergency physician, some staffing agencies have taken advantage of this crisis, not solving the issue but practicing predatory hiring and recruitment practices – poaching nurses at their workplace –Â and charging exorbitant fees to homes, which leads to nursing homes not having enough budget to cover staff replacements, for their high staff turnover.
There are currently 25,000 vacant nursing positions in Ontario, as reported by the Vice President of the Ontario Nurse Association (ONA), and these vacancies are affected by the number of healthcare workers leaving as a result of burnout, understaffing, etc. The need for covering these positions is immediate, as the staffing shortage leads to delays in the care of residents and not meeting the four hours per resident care target required by the Ministry of Long-Term Care. This leads to the more pressing need for staffing agencies to supplement staffing support to nursing homes, as they play a significant role in curbing this crisis. Sylvia Jones, Ontario Health Minister said this of Nurse staffing agencies “They are a way to deal with surges and challenges that we have when we see a disproportionate rise in illness or issues.” This leads to the question, of where are the reliable/reputable staffing agencies.
Reputable staffing agencies, like HealthOPM, take it upon themselves to prioritize the staffing needs of nursing homes that includes, in fees charged, legal recruitment processes, quality of the staff provided ie. experience, and credibility of staff. When considering a staffing agency, a number of things should be reviewed including, the ability to provide good quality service ie their response rate, their procedures, and communication, the quality of the workers provided, and reviews of the agency; what people are saying about them. These are a few things to determine the legitimacy and competency of the agency. For staffing support, give HealthOPM a call today!
HealthOPM amongst its counterparts has proven to be one of the agencies to look out for in terms of reliability and reputability. A tested and proven agency that prioritizes both clients and staff. HealthOPM follows a stringent recruitment process that rejects siphoning and poaching and provides registered and outstanding care providers to clients for continuous support for all their staffing needs. In this ever-changing industry, HealthOPM takes account of all its client’s staffing needs and creates programs that are suited for each client; from travel nursing services to ongoing temp needs and immediate on-call needs, and not charging exorbitant fees. The priority is to ensure that we support healthcare facilities in providing quality while closing the staffing gap and connecting healthcare workers with opportunities.