Your Ideas Wanted! HHHS Community Survey on Recruitment and Retention

Haliburton Highlands Health Services is seeking the community’s ideas and creative solutions to help address its healthcare worker recruitment and retention challenges.

HHHS has launched a Recruitment and Retention Community Survey (see link on the right-hand side of this page) to gather ideas about incentives and programs to help the organization attract new healthcare workers and keep current staff. The survey will be open from May 16, 2022 until May 31, 2022.

“With HHHS continuing to experience staffing shortages, we want to be sure to explore every possible option to recruit and retain the healthcare staff we need,” said Carolyn Plummer, President & CEO of HHHS. “We are asking the community to share their creative ideas and suggestions to help us recruit and retain staff, particularly Registered Nurses, Registered Practical Nurses, Personal Support Workers, and physicians.”

Staff shortages continue to impact HHHS

HHHS continues to experience approximately a 40% shortage in coverage for all Emergency Department and Hospital nursing shifts, which are being filled by non-local nursing agency staff, and a 25% shortage in coverage for Emergency Department physician shifts, which are being filled by non-local and/or HealthForce Ontario (HFO) Emergency Department Locum Program (EDLP) physicians.

HHHS has been working on both short and long-term solutions to these issues, which are impacting healthcare organizations across Ontario and Canada. This includes:
• Accessing provincial programs to fund recruitment of internationally-educated nurses and nursing students, and working with Ontario Health to identify other recruitment strategies
• Engaging in virtual career fairs to attract nursing students and new graduates
• Enhancing our social media presence, including highlighting HHHS as a great place to work
• Hiring a dedicated recruiter to work on other recruitment activities
• Meeting with local municipal leaders to identify possible collaborations and ways to support recruitment and current staff/physician retention.
• Collaborating with the Haliburton County Physician Recruitment Coordinator
• Focusing on retention by supporting education opportunities for current staff, expanding scopes of practice, upgrading and expanding technology, engaging with staff to improve our practices, creating a Professional Practice Leader/Educator role to support the onboarding of new staff and professional development of our current team, and supporting the work of the Staff Wellness Committee and their efforts to address stress, burnout, and well-being.

Since first announcing the impact of staffing shortages on HHHS in November 2021, the organization has been hard at work to keep both Emergency Departments open, while exploring options and alternatives, including the potential for service reductions or closures. “It’s important to note that HHHS has not made a decision about which Emergency Department would close, or what that closure would look like, and that the survey does not ask for feedback about which Emergency Department should reduce services,” said Plummer. “This decision will be very extremely difficult to make and must be made based on the resources HHHS can reasonably expect to have in the short-term.”

Community members and stakeholders can expect to be consulted about HHHS' longer-term planning for its facilities and services. HHHS will continue to be guided by its mandate of delivering essential, high-quality health services to the residents, cottagers, and visitors of Haliburton County and the surrounding area, and our vision of being leaders in innovative rural health care.

Responses to the Recruitment and Retention Community Survey will be kept anonymous and will be used to help inform HHHS’s local actions, as well as advocacy at regional and provincial tables.