People accessing public well being care within the Lower Mainland and all through B.C. are benefiting from steady, constant and supportive affected person care as 142 staff returned to Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) and Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) workers on March 31, 2023.

Health authorities and Providence Health Care (PHC) have introduced greater than 4,600 staff again into the general public system. This comes after nearly 20 years of those staff having their companies contracted to personal firms.

“Building a strong health-care system begins with a strong health-care workforce,” mentioned Adrian Dix, Minister of Health. “By repatriating workers back into the public system and supporting them with better wages, pension and benefits and a dedicated team-based work environment, we are delivering on our commitment to health-care workers and improving care for patients now and into the future.”

A complete of 142 employees had been repatriated as VCH and PHSA workers.

On April 1, 2023, a complete of 13 environmental companies name centre employees at the moment are VCH workers. These employees members obtain cleansing requests from employees within the VCH and PHC areas and dispatch environmental companies to scrub the areas.

At B.C. Children’s and Women’s Hospital, 129 environmental companies employees had been repatriated as PHSA workers on March 31, 2023.

“Staff who feel secure and supported feel valued and appreciated as they should be, and they provide best care for their patients,” mentioned Harwinder Sandhu, Parliamentary Secretary for Seniors’ Services and Long-Term Care. “Our health-care workers work so hard and provide exceptional care to their patients. I am so proud that our government is bringing them back to the public system with the good, secure jobs with benefits they deserve, and this is a great reason to celebrate. Welcome back, we see you, we are proud of you, and we are here to help you!”

To tackle inequality and improve working circumstances for workers in health-care services, authorities is guaranteeing that staff have the advantages, pension and wages that they deserve to have the ability to give attention to serving to sufferers. Evidence has proven that workers who really feel safe and protected of their jobs present higher-quality take care of folks, and in flip, employers can entice and retain employees at a better and extra constant stage.

“I am very happy these 142 health-services workers are returning to the public health system at the Vancouver Coastal Health and Providence Health Care,” mentioned George Heyman, MLA Vancouver-Fairview. “Bringing contracted services back to the public system restores good-quality, stable jobs for health-care workers and ensures consistent, high-quality care for people in our community. Health-care workers deserve to know that they have a stable, good-paying job so they can focus on providing high-quality patient care at work. This is another measure that strengthens our health system.”

Following the preliminary announcement on Aug. 30, 2021, well being authorities and PHC served discover below the phrases of 21 industrial service contracts and started a phased strategy to repatriate housekeeping and food-service contracts, starting with Island Health.

Work to convey health-care service staff again into the general public system started in 2019 when the Province introduced Bill 47 (Health Sector Statutes Repeal Act) into pressure. Bill 47 repealed the Health and Social Services Delivery Improvement Act (Bill 29) and the Health Sector Partnerships Agreement Act (Bill 94), which had facilitated contracting out within the well being sector and brought about vital labour impacts.

In 2020, the method began with the North Island Hospitals, which spearheaded the transfer independently of Bill 47 to convey 150 contracted-out staff in home on the Campbell River and Comox Valley hospitals.

Quotes:

Susan Wannamaker, government vice-president, medical service supply, Provincial Health Services Authority –

“While housekeeping and food services staff have always been a part of our extended family, they’re an integral part of the health-care system, so it’s meaningful that they are now recognized as part of our health-care team. Working alongside clinical staff, they play an important role in supporting the needs of our patients and families.”

Vivian Eliopoulos, president and CEO, Vancouver Coastal Health –

“We are very pleased to welcome back our environmental services call centre staff to Vancouver Coastal Health. We greatly appreciate their contributions and truly value their dedication to providing for the needs of patients, clients and residents across our acute and community sites.”

Meena Brisard, secretary-business supervisor, Hospital Employees’ Union –

“All health-care support workers are critical to patient care and safety, and deserve to be reunited with the health-care team. By bringing these workers back in house, the provincial government is reversing nearly two decades of privatization that fragmented and weakened our public health-care system, and disproportionately affected women and racialized health-care workers.”

Learn More:

To find out about Bill 47, go to: https://archive.news.gov.bc.ca/releases/news_releases_2017-2021/2018HLTH0102-002147.htm