Medical Staffing Solutions

COVID-19 revealed both the resiliencies and weaknesses of Canada’s health care system. During the first wave, from March 2020 to June 2021, hospitals and services adapted quickly to prioritize urgent, life-saving treatments while human resources were shifted and retrained to areas of greatest need. Virtual care was a big transformation as 27 to 57 per cent of physician services were provided online or by phone across five provinces where data was available.

However, as the pandemic went on, especially during the most recent Omicron wave, the lack of medical staffing solutions became apparent. The CEO of Toronto’s University Health Network said that, at one point, there were at least 100 staff absences per day. In British Columbia, 20 to 30 per cent of ambulances across the province have been out of service for more than year due to a lack of staff. And while COVID-19 has understandably impacted health care staffing significantly, this shortage has been years in the making.

Not Just About Money

In 2009, the Canadian Nurses Association projected that without policy interventions, Canada would be short almost 60,000 full-time equivalent nurses by 2022. Part of this is due to a lack of funding. In a 2019 report, the Ontario Hospital Association said that the province’s hospitals were under significant strain due to years of “funding restraint,” which was a year before the pandemic.

But the current staffing challenges in Canada’s health care is more than just a lack of funding. A study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2019 point out that “we do a very poor job of health workforce planning in Canada, in large part because of inadequate health workforce data.” Canada is the only developed country without a national human resources strategy.

As the study explains, Canada needs to start collecting high-quality data on the health care workforce so we can know who makes up the workforce and how they work. A lack of information limits planning models, tools, and processes.

And, as Alex Munter, CEO of the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, points out, we need accelerated training programs in postsecondary that enable upskilling within organizations as well as a renewed commitment to put foreign-trained professionals to work in our systems.

Modern Staffing Solutions

Triton can help be a part of modernized medical staffing solutions.

Health care workers deal with some of the most vulnerable people in our population, so employers need to hire trustworthy candidates. Our criminal background checks, education history verifications, and employment background checks will vet any candidate and their credentials quickly and thoroughly.

Moreover, our industry-leading background check solutions can integrate with any applicant tracking system or HR software, giving health care employers the necessary level of agility and sophistication to tackle today’s staffing challenges.

To learn more, contact us today by phone at 1-855-790-7516, by email at customerservice@tritoncanada.ca, or by visiting our website.