Fears are growing across the Northern Tablelands that the region’s already struggling hospitals could lose even more staff, after Hunter New England Health confirmed financial incentives for some nurses will be cut.
Numerous nurses across the New England, including those in key hospital roles, have been told they will lose their existing incentive payments under the Rural Health Workforce Incentive Scheme after Hunter New England Local Health District reclassified their positions.
Hunter New England Health refused to detail the specific positions and hospitals affected by the decision, but it is understood to include multiple nurses in Moree and almost all nursing staff in Armidale, effectively delivering a pay cut to dozens of local frontline staff.
Member for Northern Tablelands Brendan Moylan has condemned the NSW Labor Government and NSW Health for stripping away payments under the Scheme, which is designed to attract and retain critical health workers in hard to fill positions in rural and remote areas.
“Our nurses are the backbone of country healthcare, and this decision makes absolutely no sense,” Mr Moylan said.
“This scheme was working. It was keeping staff in rural hospitals and helping to hold our health system together. Now Labor’s slashing it, cutting take-home pay for hardworking nurses and driving them out of the bush. It’s not just short-sighted, it’s reckless.”
Mr Moylan said the change would force hospitals to rely more heavily on fly-in, fly-out agency nurses, pushing up costs for taxpayers and reducing continuity of care for patients.
“This is policy vandalism,” he said. “It punishes the very people holding our health system together. Our regional nurses are already overworked and underpaid, now Labor’s taking away the one thing that was helping keep them here.”
He said he would take the fight to Parliament this week to demand the government reverse the decision and reinstate the incentive scheme in full.
“Labor says rural health workers are worth less. My message is just as clear: fix this mess.”
Armidale Hospital Branch President of the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association, Emma Ratajczyk, said the reassessments were required by the policy, but the policy settings were wrong.
“The problem is the retention and recruitment bonus has been assessed based on a policy that assesses how difficult it is to fill a particular position,” Ms Ratajczyk said.
“When we’ve got people who live in the community, we want to retain them there, and they should be rewarded for staying and committing to their community.
“We shouldn’t be waiting for people to resign and then re-advertise their position, to then find out it’s hard to fill, in order to be offering extra money for that role. But that is what the criteria are.”
Positions eligible for the incentive have an established history of being hard to fill or high in turnover, the job has been advertised on at least two occasions in a six-month period and no suitable candidates were offered the position, and the position is critical to service provision. Ratajczyk explained it is assessed on the group – so if there are 20 staff on a ward, and there are two positions they haven’t been able to fill, all will get the incentive so there is no unfairness; but once they have hired someone for the position, all staff in that role will stop getting their incentives 12 months later.
“We should be rewarding those already here for staying in our communities.”
Ms Ratajczyk said most nurses and midwives in Armidale had recently received letters saying their allowance would stop in 12 months.
“In my case, it’s $2 more an hour. That does add up, and because it’s part of a weekly wage, it’s actually part of families’ budgets and expenditures,” she said.
“There are a lot of members who are very stressed and concerned about receiving the letters that this payment will stop, especially given we haven’t had pay rises that have kept up with CPI for a long time.”
She said local hospitals were already suffering from staff shortages, made worse by better pay interstate and in the Commonwealth sector.
“We do lose staff to aged care, where the funding is different and the wages are better,” she said.
Jane Street, Executive Director of People and Culture for Hunter New England Local Health District, said the scheme remains important but needs to adapt to workforce conditions.
“Our nurses and midwives are central to providing safe, high-quality care in rural and regional communities, and we greatly value their contribution,” Ms Street said.
“Following a recent review, we found that some positions no longer meet the criteria set by the Rural Health Workforce Incentive Scheme.
“Changes will not come into effect for 12 months.
“We acknowledge these changes can cause concern and will be consulting with affected staff to ensure they are supported during this transition.”
One local nurse told the New England Times the decision was “absolutely ridiculous” and would further disincentivise staff.
“I don’t believe it matters when it comes into effect. Nurses are working double shifts at the moment to cover for a lack of staffing as even agency nurses don’t wish to come to regional areas,” she said.
“I’m working constant double shifts to cover shortages.”
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