BCNU warns of nursing shortages as 55,000 surgeries go to private clinics

The BC Nurses' Union says contracting out 55,000 day surgeries will make nursing shortages worse on Vancouver Island, as private clinics poach staff from the public health care system. "Where do they think the specialty trained operating room nurses will come from" asks President Gayle Duteil.

Duteil also questions why taxpayers' dollars are feeding for-profit clinics, instead of finding solutions within the public system. "Island Health can reduce wait lists by innovating and finding ways to make better use of space within publicly funded facilities. Instead, the health authority is spending taxpayers' dollars to help expand private clinics and increase their profits."

Private health care does not reduce wait times. A study of five Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations found that public sector wait times are longer in Britain and New Zealand, where both privately financed systems and publicly funded systems are in place, than in countries offering only publicly funded services. (Tuohy, 2004)

Another study published in the Australian Health Review concluded that the more services were performed in the private sector, the longer the wait times were in the public sector.

"We know that more capacity is readily available for day surgeries at Victoria General Hospital," says Duteil. "Most of the operating rooms are finished by 3:30pm weekdays and empty on weekends. Why is Island Health sending patients to for profit clinics, instead of expanding and developing sites already paid for by taxpayers?"

The evidence is clear that increasing public resources reduces wait lists. A British Medical Bulletin published in the Oxford Journals in 2010 showed:

Cross-national comparisons suggest a consistent link between greater capacity (e.g. acute-care beds, physicians, overall spending) and shorter wait times.1,19 Proactive, targeted investment in public-sector capacity is an effective long-term strategy to control wait times. (http://bmb.oxfordjournals.org/content/95/1/7.full)

The effectiveness of targeted investment in public sector capacity as a way to address wait lists was demonstrated to be effective according to the bulletin in Denmark and more recently in Manitoba.