Ontario's community health centres sound the alarm about staffing shortages due to widening wage gap

Ontario's community health sector is coming together to voice concerns over staffing issues - caused by a growing wage gap.

"We want to close the gap. We want team based and all community health workers to actually get paid a fair wage and dare I say, a living wage," said Marg Alfieri, Registered Dietician and Chair of the Grand Bend and Area Community Health Center.

An open house was held at the Grand Bend and Area Community Health Center on Tuesday, where staff stressed the importance of the work they do providing essential health care.

Primary Care Coordinator Paige Baltessen said she knows first hand the importance of shrinking the wage gap for the employees working at the primary healthcare hub in the region.

An open house was held at Grand Bend Community Health Centre on October 29, 2024 (Reta Ismail/CTV News London)

"My nursing staff have a 15 to 20 dollars compensation wage difference [compared to] their peers in the hospital. It is getting [more] difficult every day to ensure that they stay here," continued Baltessen. "They often state that they love to live and work in their community, but it's getting harder and harder every day with rising cost of inflation, to be able to stay here."

Baltessen said the wage gap causes staff turnover, burnout and major recruitment challenges.

"We've lost two staff last year to hospitals, so I'm having to cover frontline staff often. I'm working front reception desk and covering weekends, so we're working six days a week, nine, ten hour shifts sometimes. My staff are trying to meet the needs of the community so that there's no barriers to access for our patients," explained Baltessen.

Primary Care Coordinator Paige Baltessen said that the pay at other health care positions is competitive, and they're locked in on a tight budget (Reta Ismail/CTV News London)

Community health centers are locked-in to salary scales based on a budget from the province, which have limited pay increases in the last several years.

The group says an all-of-government approach is needed to address their ongoing challenges.

"There needs to be funding placed towards some type of parity. I think if you can do the same job here that you could do in an urban center - I think you should be paid the same amount of money," explained Dan Sageman, Grand Bend and Area Community Health Center board vice-chair.

Sageman told CTV News that he believes that rural healthcare workers deserve competitive compensation (Reta Ismail/CTV News London)

“The worst-case scenario is, if you can't get the wages that you need, you probably try to cannibalize a position, right? So you take a position and you don't fill it, and then you use those resources to spread it out," cautioned Ralph Ganter, Grand Bend and Area Community Health Centre CEO.

If wages do not increase staff fear essential health care services will become harder to access in growing communities across Ontario.