The High Cost of Turnover in Canada's Healthcare System: A Financial and Leadership Blind Spot

This paper examines the financial and leadership implications of workforce turnover in the Canadian healthcare system. Turnover costs are often dispersed across operational budgets and rarely consolidated into a single financial measure, making the total economic impact difficult to assess. Drawing on modelling originally developed as part of a capstone project at the Rotman School of Management, this paper explores how replacement costs, productivity loss, and operational disruption accumulate across organizations and sectors. The analysis suggests that turnover represents a substantial structural financial drain on the healthcare system and argues that retention should be treated as a strategic financial priority rather than a human resource concern.