Health crisis: Five-fold increase in spend on agency nurses to fill regional WA staff vacancies

Staff shortages and rising crime in regional WA have led to a staggering surge in agency nurses contracted to fill vacancies at country hospitals. The WA Country Health Service (WACHS) spent $125 million on contracting 578 agency nurses to fill vacancies in regional hospitals in the 2022-2023 financial year — and admitted that crime in parts of regional WA was deterring nurses from working there. The $125m spend was up from $36m to fill 308 vacancies in 2021-2022 and just $26M to fill 167 vacancies in 2020-2021. The numbers were revealed in Parliament last week by the Cook Government’s leader in the Legislative Council, Sue Ellery, after questions from the WA Liberals. Liberal leader and shadow health spokesperson Libby Mettam said the almost five-fold increase in expenditure on casual agency nurses was “a sign of a system under extreme stress”. “The Cook Labor Government has run down our health system so much it is struggling to attract much-needed nursing staff for critical roles,” Ms Mettam said. “It is easy to see why morale is so low among WA nurses, whose pay has gone from the best in the nation to the worst.” Ms Mettam said WA — as the wealthiest State in the country — should have hospitals that were “the employer of choice for nurses from across the country”. “Instead our health system is running on near empty and being topped up with temporary nursing staff,” she said. The figures come as the WA nurses union calls for a 5 per cent pay rise per year for nurses and midwives and has doubled down on its threat to run as a single-issue party in the next election — claiming 83 per cent of its members support the bid. Australian Nursing Federation WA secretary Janet Reah said the high turnover had caused a “lack of trust between Indigenous communities and the local hospitals”. “One of the issues is with such a high staff turnover. . .is that the resident communities have a harder time building trust with their health practitioners,” Ms Reah said. “When you have more permanent staff, the usual patients and their health requirements are known by staff that regularly treat them, resulting in faster treatment and processing of patients. “The goal should be to offer better pay and incentives for permanent staff to fill these positions, rather than budget blowouts that do not actually result in the required positions being filled.” Ms Reah said there needed to be better management of the health budget. “No one wants to move to remote places when there is meagre pay, skyrocketing crime and break-in rates and inflation,” she said. A WACHS spokesperson defended the mass recruitment of agency nurses, saying all health jurisdictions were facing workforce challenges amid a global shortage of staff. “The issue is not unique to Western Australia,” they said. “In rural and remote WA, we know large distances, small populations and geographical isolation also make it hard to retain long-term staff across all sectors.” The spokesperson said crime was a “significant detractor” for nurses in some communities and made it hard to recruit staff to work in those towns. Last year, the Broome Advertiser revealed that nurses in the Kimberley were living in “genuine fear” due to a rise in crime — including an instance when an ambulance was vandalised the same night nurses’ accommodation was burgled. “To combat this, we are working hard to implement a range of strategies and were able to attract a record number of newly qualified nurses and midwives, medical interns and intern pharmacists to country WA this year,” the WACHS spokesperson said. The spokesperson said WACHS had also offered eligible existing nurses a fully funded Postgraduate Diploma of Midwifery, upgraded staff accommodation including more security and established a program to financially incentivise new and existing nurses and midwives to work in remote parts of the State. “Agency staff remain an important part of all rural and remote health systems,” they said.