New Brunswick Auditor General Paul Martin is seen in Fredericton on Sept. 7, 2023. Mr. Martin's office will conduct an audit of travel nursing contracts signed by the province’s departments of Health and Social Development and two of its health networks, Horizon and Vitalité.Hina Alam/The Canadian Press
New Brunswick’s Auditor-General will investigate travel nursing contracts in the province after The Globe and Mail revealed that one private agency had charged more than $300 an hour for nurses and billed a health network for meal allowances that appear never to have been distributed to the company’s workers.
Auditor-General Paul Martin said Wednesday that his office will conduct an independent audit of travel nursing contracts signed by the province’s departments of Health and Social Development and two of its health networks, Horizon and Vitalité. Under these contracts, which proliferated across the country during the pandemic, agencies supply nurses and other workers to understaffed health care facilities for profit.
In an interview, Mr. Martin said his office had been considering the audit for a year. “The timing is right,” he said. “We are looking for co-operation from all parties involved.”
While no date has been set for completing the audit, “our intention is to get it done as soon as possible,” Mr. Martin said, noting that the review process had already started.
Vitalité said it would co-operate but, in a written statement, the network cautioned that “this cooperation must however take place within a framework which does not exceed the mandate and powers of the Auditor.” The health authority also said the audit must not “interfere with [Vitalité]’s ability to provide essential health services to the population.”
A February investigation by The Globe focused on one agency, Canadian Health Labs, that did the bulk of its business in New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador. Vitalité, New Brunswick’s francophone health authority, is CHL’s biggest client. The company’s current nursing deal with Vitalité runs to 2026 and is worth a maximum of $93-million.
New Brunswick officials paid nursing firm for meal allowances workers never received
Copies of three contracts obtained by The Globe show Vitalité was paying CHL the equivalent of just over $300 an hour for each nurse the agency provided – more than six times the hourly wage of a unionized staff nurse – and $162 an hour for personal support workers. Those aides are generally paid between $20 and $25 an hour in the public system. Vitalité also paid companies owned by CHL’s chief executive officer, Bill Hennessey, to provide rental cars and accommodations for CHL’s out-of-province workers.
CHL did not respond to a request seeking comment on the New Brunswick Auditor-General’s announcement Wednesday.
As part of its contracts with Vitalité, CHL charged taxpayers $46 a day for meal allowances for each traveling nurse or personal support worker. But nine nurses CHL assigned to Vitalité told The Globe earlier this month that they had never received money for meals from the company, and The Globe obtained two employment offers that said New Brunswick nurses were responsible for their own food.
The Globe found the same pattern in Newfoundland, where invoices obtained through freedom of information show CHL billed taxpayers for $1.6-million in meal per diems. The Globe’s investigation – which included speaking with 27 CHL nurses and a review of nursing contracts – found no evidence that this money was passed on to CHL’s workers.
The Globe is not naming the nurses because they signed non-disclosure agreements with CHL.
CHL has declined multiple times in recent weeks to answer questions about the billing discrepancy.
In a statement provided before The Globe published its first story about CHL, the company said its rates “reflect the extraordinary logistical challenges of getting and keeping health care professionals in rural, remote and underserved communities.”
Mr. Martin’s audit will include the two government departments, in addition to the two health networks, because private agencies supplied workers to the Health Department to run COVID-19 vaccination and testing clinics, and to the Social Development Department to staff long-term care homes.
The New Brunswick newspaper L’Acadie Nouvelle reported this week that during the period when Vitalité signed its three contracts with CHL, the health network was accountable to a trustee appointed by the government, Gérald Richard.
Premier Blaine Higgs had dismissed the boards of both Vitalité and Horizon in July, 2022, after the death of a patient in an emergency room, and replaced them for a year with a trustee for each network.
In an open letter released Wednesday by Vitalité, Mr. Richard, who no longer oversees the health network, said he would co-operate fully with Mr. Martin’s audit. He said signing travel nursing contracts was necessary because Vitalité was so short on personnel in 2022 that it risked having to shut down essential services. “When there’s a fire, you can’t afford to save water,” he said.
Horizon’s interim president and chief executive officer, Margaret Melanson, said in a statement that travel nurses have been “critical” in supporting the health system in the past year. “We are supportive of this audit, and extensive information is readily available regarding Horizon’s use of travel nurses.”
Opposition politicians and nursing unions in Newfoundland have called on Denise Hanrahan, the province’s Auditor-General, to investigate CHL’s contracts there. Ms. Hanrahan’s office has said travel nursing “is being actively considered for audit.”
Newfoundland Health Minister Tom Osborne has asked his government’s Comptroller-General to review the contracts. Speaking in the legislature this week, Mr. Osborne said such a process could eventually lead to a probe by the Auditor-General and even a referral to Justice Department officials.
“If there’s anything untoward in those contracts and they weren’t followed to the letter of the law, actions will be taken. I guarantee you that,” Mr. Osborne told the House of Assembly on Tuesday.