When we take into account the entire health workforce, both private and public, all types of professions combined, there is no shortage of personnel, indicates a new study by the Institute for socio-economic research and information (IRIS). It is rather an exodus of public employees to the private sector, according to labor market data.
This is what Anne Plourde, a researcher at IRIS who specializes in health policies, explains. In her study published Tuesday, she claims that the total health and social services workforce per capita, from the public and private sectors, was 35% higher in 2022 than 30 years ago. According to his analysis, there are 132,000 more people working in this sector than in 1991.
In her calculation, Ms. Plourde takes into account the aging of the population and the greater needs of this population. The IRIS study highlights that people aged 65 and over represent 20% of the population, but they account for 47% of health spending, that is to say 2.3 times more than their demographic weight. .
The researcher points out that the shortage is very real for nurses and that for doctors, the number per capita is stagnating. She recognizes that these two professions are pillars of the Quebec health system, in particular, she says, since they are more focused on curative care than prevention.
“We have a public discourse which is very focused on the fact that we have a labor shortage in health and social services, and this is often presented as an indisputable fact,” Ms. Plourde said in an interview. But when we analyze the data, we see that it is more complex than we think. When we look at the workforce as a whole, including the private sector and the public sector, we actually see that there is more labor now than in the last 30 years. »
“In the public sector, there has truly been a chronic shortage of manpower for many years. »
Ms. Plourde believes that the three most recent reforms of the health system in Quebec have all contributed to reducing the quality of working conditions for health personnel. As an argument, she talks about overtime in the public network which has increased over the years. She maintains that the proportion of total remuneration devoted to overtime (not to be confused with compulsory overtime) increased from 1 to 6% between 1991 and 2020.
She fears that the transfer of personnel from the public to the private sector will continue with the reform of the Santé Québec agency.
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