Unfortunately, as I told the Winnipeg Sun last week, the positive statements shared by members of the legislature aren’t translating quickly enough into practice to provide relief for you on the front line. That needs to change. 

We believe much of the problem lies with Shared Health. That’s why MAHCP is advocating for the much-needed culture change that has been promised. Our provincial government won’t be able to add 200 more paramedics (like they committed to during last year’s election campaign) unless Shared Health changes their ways, recruits and hires faster, and stops making your job harder.  

This Paramedic Week, and every week, you deserve to be valued, supported and fully staffed. You should be able to focus on patient care, decompress with proper time off, and forge a rewarding career with opportunity for advancement. Instead, you’re worrying about your next shift and if you’ll have the resources you need to help the Manitobans who rely on you.

If you have a story you want me to hear, one you think will help as I advocate to the Minister of Health and other system leaders about the changes we need, please reach out to me at president@mahcp.ca. We have more work to do, together.

Once again, I want to wish everyone a Happy Paramedic Week. Thank you for what you do.

In solidarity, 

Jason Linklater   

The post Statement from MAHCP President in honour of 2024 Paramedic Week appeared first on Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals.

“Manitoba is still burning out paramedics due to short-staffing,” said Linklater. “If I have one piece of advice right now, it is to hire paramedics whenever and wherever you can get them, and offer incentives in areas where you are having difficulty recruiting.”

Recent new hires are just plugging huge holes as paramedics leave, so it’s not clear that progress is being made yet. MAHCP is committed to working with Shared Health and the Manitoba government to make sure they can meet the Budget 2024 commitment to add 90 paramedics, and Premier Kinew’s broader election commitment to add 200 more paramedics.

“Manitoba lost hundreds of paramedics in recent years in rural Manitoba, driving up response times for the life-saving services they provide. We don’t have updated staffing numbers, but anecdotally, we are hearing that paramedics are still just as stretched, and estimates still range anywhere from 150 to 200 vacancies across the province, or 30 to 40% depending on the area.”

As we cap off #2024AlliedHealthWeek, we move into #ParamedicWeek and what will undoubtedly be a busy May long weekend for our paramedics. Stay safe.

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More than 8,000 allied health professionals work in our province’s public health-care system, and they’re essential to patient care. Manitoba has work to do to make sure they see our province as the best place to provide their specialized services.

Allied health professionals are in hospitals, clinics, laboratories, long-term care and community settings, working in lockstep with physicians and nurses, and Manitobans depend on the services they provide.

For example, the laboratory tests, MRI and CT scans, X-rays and other critical tests diagnostic technologists perform are essential to assessment and surgical procedures, influencing 80% of clinical decisions.

When we lose one of these specialized professionals, they are not easy to replace.

Rising allied health vacancies are doing real damage, with existing staff dealing with increasing workloads and logging a crushing volume of overtime to fill in the gaping holes. Manitoba is at risk of losing more of them because other jurisdictions are offering more competitive wages and benefits and incentives, and less bruising and demoralizing working conditions.

MAHCP hears daily from our members that patients and health-care workers are at risk because the staffing situation is not improving.

According to a member’s powerful letter to Manitoba Health Minister Asagwara, “Shared Health is not posting open positions, allowing sites to continually work short. All of health care is being pushed to do more with less, less resources and less staff. We are all burnt out, and sadly a lot of health-care professionals have had enough and are walking away.”

Allied health vacancy rates have increased dramatically in recent years, causing rural paramedic stations to sit empty, rural emergency rooms to shut down, and forcing Manitoba patients to wait longer to access care, often travelling far from home. Here are just some of examples we’ve uncovered:

• At Thompson General Hospital, provider of lab services for the province’s largest health region, medical laboratory technologists have dwindled from 12 to two. According to reports, Thompson ER patients were recently left without access to critical lab tests as a result. “……my last stretch of working 24 hours, I got to a point where I couldn’t function anymore. I had one hour of sleep in 48 hours. This is not sustainable,” said a Thompson lab technologist recently.
• In Brandon, at the Manitoba Transport Coordination Centre (MTCC), dispatchers who coordinate rural and northern Manitoba emergency medical response and patient transport, can be operating on any given shift with just two of seven dispatchers required. They are getting to 911 calls as fast as they can, but Manitobans are waiting longer on hold than they should and waiting longer for the ambulance to arrive.
• Rural paramedics are currently experiencing a 40% vacancy rate. An MAHCP paramedic in the Interlake-Eastern region shared that the Saturday of the Easter long weekend saw just seven of 21 ambulances on the road because of staffing vacancies.
• Manitoba’s median MRI wait times are now topping 30 weeks at some sites.
• Mammography technologists at CancerCare Manitoba’s BreastCheck are dealing with an estimated 40% vacancy rate, as Manitobans wait six months or more for breast cancer screening.

Where are we going to find more specialized allied health professionals? Last month we learned that Red River Polytechnic received only 32 applicants for 40 training seats in medical laboratory sciences. That program used to have a wait list. The same is happening with respiratory therapy at the University of Manitoba and other critical training programs that supply the pipeline to fill the vacancies that already exist, let alone to replace the many professionals who could burn out or retire soon.

We acknowledge that culture change takes time, and that the Manitoba government has pledged overdue investments in health-care staffing. But allied health professionals and patients can’t wait any longer. Change and investment are needed now. Our recommendations:

• Get to work on cultural transformation, workload management, competitive contracts and incentives so we can retain experienced professionals and attract more of them.
• Post staffing vacancies and change hiring practices to make sure those positions are filled quickly. Increase baseline staffing where needed to meet increased patient volume and acuity.
• Expand allied health recruitment efforts and training programs to ensure Manitoba can meet the need for specialized health-care professionals, now and into the future.

Finally, and most importantly, value your staff. Recognize and remunerate existing allied health properly. We cannot afford to lose any more of these specialized health-care professionals. Tomorrow is the kick off for 2024 Allied Health Week.

This week – and every week — let’s show our allied health professionals they matter.

The post 2024 Allied Health Week: It’s time to implement tangible, meaningful changes for allied health in Manitoba appeared first on Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals.

Without allied health professionals, the health-care system doesn’t function…at all. Our members conduct diagnostic imaging. They are the pharmacists who manage medication. They provide essential lab work. They provide radiation treatment for cancer patients, deliver occupational therapy and physiotherapy services following surgery, transport and maintain critically ill patients, respond to trauma situations throughout Manitoba, and so much more. They work everywhere throughout health care and they are struggling to keep their heads above water. Allied health is the very foundation of the system.

According to the Working Together agreement, “Manitoba will move forward with its commitments to fix the damage, starting with staffing shortages.” The plan for 1,000 additional staff in key areas including 200 paramedics is excellent news, but we need to address all critical staff shortages across the system. We’re calling on government to address vacancies by:

1. Assessing recruitment and retention practices to attract younger workers to a career in health care and prevent attrition
   1. Implement positive changes to wages and incentives, and improve working conditions to boost Manitoba’s competitiveness
   2. Evaluate COVID-19 premiums and re-introduce a revised retention incentive premium framework for the hardest-hit professional areas
   3. Post all vacant positions and work towards filling those roles

2. Increasing education intake
   1. Expand training seats in key programs
   2. Roll out education opportunities in a variety of satellite locations throughout Manitoba
   3. Launch bursaries and return-of-service agreements for the hardest-hit professions

3. Increasing investment in key allied health areas, including family health services in rural and remote areas, mental health & addictions, and long-term care

In theory, this level of funding should take some of the pressure off and enable critical investments to be made throughout Manitoba’s fragile health-care system. MAHCP asks that the funding be put directly towards fixing health care, and not towards the goal of balancing the budget.

We can’t afford NOT to make significant investments in health care.

The post Statement from President Jason Linklater on bilateral health-care funding agreements appeared first on Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals.

Download PDF here | Shared Health Response to FIPPA Request

May 27, 2022 Winnipeg, MB – During Paramedic Services Week which is from May 22 to 28, the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals (MAHCP) is calling attention to the mounting paramedic staffing crisis affecting emergency medical services in rural Manitoba. Despite an as-yet unfulfilled 2019 commitment by the Manitoba Government to hire 80 additional paramedics – a commitment renewed in Budget 2022 – all available evidence points to increasing staffing vacancies, out-of-service hours and response times for rural ambulances.

“Frontline paramedics are reporting around 50 vacancies in the Prairie Mountain Health operational area alone, and there are three other regions that are desperately short-staffed,” said MACHP President Bob Moroz. “With the busy summer season bearing down, the situation is only going to get worse. Our already burnt-out paramedics are bracing for chaos in the coming months.”

Shared Health has reportedly struggled to fill paramedic vacancies in recent years. Manitoba’s flagship Primary Care Paramedic program at Red River College Polytechnic recently extended training from a one year to a two-year program and is therefore not turning out any graduates this year, making hiring even more challenging. Shared Health is also competing for paramedics with the City of Winnipeg, where wages are up to 25% higher and recruitment efforts have intensified, as well as other municipalities (Brandon and Thompson), and a small number of private providers (e.g., STARS, Fisher EMS) that hire paramedics.

“The health minister is telling Manitobans not to worry, that the recent budget has money to hire 35 additional paramedics,” said Moroz. “That commitment is part of a 2019 pledge they haven’t met, and it’s going to be impossible because there are no paramedics to hire. Shared Health can’t fill the vacancies they have now, let alone adding staff, and meanwhile ambulances are taking longer to respond to medical emergencies in rural Manitoba.”

Shared Health has not released information on paramedic staffing levels to show the status of the government’s 2019 hiring commitment of 80 additional equivalent full time (EFT) positions. An MAHCP freedom of information request for detailed data on the number of frontline positions and vacancies was denied, with Shared Health claiming that “records do not exist” and stating that it is “working on a process to have vacancy and position information readily available.” Information previously obtained by MAHCP showed out-of-service hours due to staffing shortages for rural ambulances spiking, reaching 19,000 hours in December 2021.

MAHCP wrote a letter to Health Minister Audrey Gordon in January demanding an urgent plan for paramedic training, recruitment and retention but has not received a response to date. The union is calling on the Manitoba Government to take immediate steps to build more training opportunities for rural paramedics, including working with partners in Brandon and restoring rotating programs at rural and Northern sites that were previously cut. Shared Health must also work with frontline paramedics to alleviate understaffing, burnout and fatigue in the short term and retain as many paramedics as possible.

The Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals is the union representing over 7000 members from all over Manitoba, including over 800 rural paramedics. MAHCP represents 85% of Allied Health Care Professionals in Manitoba, working in more than 190 disciplines in health care settings across the province.

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For more information or interview requests contact:
Tim Smith, Manager of Outreach and Communications
Phone: 431-337-7787 | Email: tim@mahcp.ca

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