Nearly 1,900 Ontario Nurses Commuting to Work in Michigan: Report

A nurse tends to a patient on a ventilator at Beaumont Hospital in Dearborn, Michigan, on Dec. 17, 2021. JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images

As Ontario faces an estimated shortage of 30,000 nurses and health care professionals, a new report finds that nearly 1,900 nurses living in the province regularly commute to work in Michigan.

The report was published by the think tank Secondstreet.org, which contacted just over 3,000 Ontario nurses with active licenses in the U.S. state to learn about their decision to work outside of the country.

A total of 1,887 nurses surveyed, or 63 percent, live in Ontario and said they regularly commute to work in Michigan. Another 248 nurses, or 8.2 percent, indicated a desire to work in the U.S. state in the future.

The survey found that the most common incentive for the nurses to take work in Michigan was “availability of work” (30 percent), followed by “compensation” (25 percent) and “working conditions” (23 percent). Many noted that they were seeking full-time positions in Ontario, but only part-time positions were available.

The findings come after a report published last month by the Ontario Financial Accountability Office suggested the province is facing a shortage of 33,000 nurses and personal health care aides, and falls short of $21.3 billion to cover health care costs in the next five years.

The province is also struggling with a backlog of more than 200,000 patients waiting for surgical procedures left over from the COVID-19 pandemic, during which approximately 600,000 fewer surgeries were performed. To reduce the backlog, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced in January that the province will allow private and non-profit clinics to take over routine surgeries.

‘Big Opportunity’

SecondStreet.org said in a release that the study aims to find an alternative source of medical professionals to fill the shortage.

“There’s a big opportunity for government-run hospitals to improve and convince some of these nurses to work in the public system, but new private surgical clinics can also give these workers more choices in terms of where to work,” said SecondStreet.org President Colin Craig in the April 19 release.

“Compensation was a factor for why many nurses decided to work in Ontario, but a majority couldn’t find the type of work they were looking for or didn’t like the working conditions.”

The Windsor Regional Hospital recently implemented a signing bonus of $25,000 to attract new registered nurses. Similar hiring incentives were applied by hospitals in other parts of Ontario such as Kingston and Thunder Bay.

“We’re looking into how many Canadian nurses and doctors currently work in other states along the border,” Craig said. “I suspect there is a sizeable opportunity for government hospitals and private clinics in Canada to convince more health care workers to work in our country instead of crossing the border.”

As of April 1, 2023, there are over 182,000 nurses who have registered with the College of Nurses of Ontario, according to the provincial regulator.

Marnie Cathcart and Tara MacIsaac contributed to this report.