Ontario proposes requiring health staffing agencies to disclose their rates [Video]

Ontario is proposing to increase transparency and accountability around health staffing agencies, as hospitals and long-term care homes spend about $1 billion a year to fill shifts with temporary workers at rates far higher than full-time staff are paid.

It’s a positive — if small — step toward regulating or lowering the fees of agencies that charge double or even triple the rates of staff nurses and personal support workers, some critics and advocates hope.

Health Minister Sylvia Jones introduced legislation earlier this month that would require health-care staffing agencies to report billing or pay rate information to her, and would allow the minister to publish some of that information.

“It will allow us to more easily measure and see whether we are seeing stabilization, increasing use, decreasing use, and where,” Jones said.

She would not, however, commit to treating the collection of that information as a first step toward …