There is no shortage of health care workers in the private and public sectors indicates a new study by the Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques (IRIS).
Rather, according to labour market data, there is an exodus of employees from the public to the private sector.
IRIS researcher Anne Plourde specializes in health care policy and explained that the study published on Tuesday, finds that the total health and social services workforce per capita, from both the public and private sectors, will be 35 per cent higher in 2022 than it was 30 years ago.
According to the analysis, 132,000 more people working in this sector than in 1991.
The IRIS study points out that people aged 65 and over represent 20 per cent of the population, but account for 47 per cent of health care spending, which is 2.3 times their demographic weight.
The researcher notes that there is a shortage of nurses, but the number of doctors per capita is stable.
Plourde acknowledges that these two professions are pillars of the Quebec health care system because they focus more on curative care than prevention.
“The public discourse is very much focused on the fact that we have a shortage of health and social services workers, and this is often presented as an indisputable fact,” Plourde said. “But when you analyze the data, you see that it’s more complex than you think. When you look at the workforce as a whole, including both the private and public sectors, you actually see that there is more of a workforce now than there has been in the last 30 years.”
“In the public sector, there has been a chronic shortage of workers for many years,” she added.
Plourde says she believes that the three most recent reforms of Quebec’s health care system have all contributed to a decline in the quality of working conditions.
She points out that mandatory overtime in the public network has increased over the years.
Plourde maintains that the proportion of total remuneration devoted to overtime (not to be confused with compulsory overtime) rose from one to six per cent between 1991 and 2020.
She says she fears that the transfer of personnel from the public to the private sector will continue with creation of Santé Québec.
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–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews