Auditor general slams travel-nurse contracts, says Vitalité withheld information

New Brunswick’s auditor general is criticizing the Vitalité health authority for its handling of $123 million in travel-nurse contracts — and for its refusal to hand over key information about the agreements.

Paul Martin acknowledges in his audit that the health system was facing dire staffing shortages in 2022 when the authority signed its first contract with Canadian Health Labs.

But he says the deployment of travel nurses in Vitalité’s hospitals “did not correlate with staff absences due to COVID-19” — one of the main rationales provided for the reliance on travel nurses — or with unplanned staff absences.

There was no proper bidding process, no legal review of the contracts and no review before Canadian Health Labs was paid for its travel nurses, in long-term care homes, under a separate contract with the Department of Social Development, the audit says.

Martin also casts doubt on Vitalité’s rationale for its heavy spending on travel nurses: that French-speaking nurses are harder to recruit, which created a more severe shortage at the health authority’s facilities, which operate in French.

The auditor general says the contract required that Canada Health Labs provide only “limited” service in French in some hospitals.

Health network hasn’t co-operated, AG says

He also says Vitalité refused to give his office three internal audits it conducted itself into its contracts with the company, a violation of the Auditor General Act which says the office is entitled to “free access” to all documents whether they’re confidential or not.

“Due to the lack of co-operation from Vitalité, risks that they identified in the audit reports and to what extent those risks were addressed is not known,” Martin’s report says.

“It is critical that government organizations understand the powers of the Auditor General and comply with the Auditor General Act.”

In a response published as an appendix to Martin’s report, Vitalité disputes many of Martin’s findings and says its use of travel nurses allowed it to avoid:

• The closure of the Campbellton Regional Hospital’s emergency department.

• A two-thirds reduction in emergency capacity at Moncton’s Dr. Georges-L. Dumont University Hospital Centre in Moncton.

• The closure of the Restigouche Hospital Centre, the province’s forensic psychology facility.

“The network had to act quickly to counter the nursing shortage,” it says.