Wed., Nov. 30, 2022
Doctors were paid five times more than nurses to give COVID-19 vaccine injections, the auditor general says in an annual report that found booster shots wasted, “hot spots” missed, and slammed Premier Doug Ford for “ignoring” his own experts to plow ahead with Highway 413.
The going rate for doctors putting needles in arms was between $170 to $220 per hour, compared with $32 to $49 for nurses and $30 to $57 for pharmacists, Bonnie Lysyk said Wednesday, raising questions about the “wide range of pay” at public health and hospital clinics.
“There was a significant gap in the rate paid,” the 1,083-page report noted.
The finding comes a day after an Ontario Superior Court justice struck down the Ford government’s Bill 124 wage restraint legislation, which limited nurses and other public sector workers to annual pay increases of one per cent and has been blamed for an exodus of workers from a health-care system strained by the pandemic.
Health Minister Sylvia Jones said pay rates were set by regional health units, which pulled in a range of qualified health-care workers to give shots “in a very quick way” to blunt the pandemic as vaccines became available.
New Democrat MPP France Gélinas (Nickel Belt) said the pay differential created “a lot of friction” given continuing discontent over Bill 124 — particularly now that the government has said it plans to appeal the court ruling.
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