‘It’s been getting worse’: Winnipeg hospitals have worst ER wait times in the country

Posted on August 27, 2024 by Peggy

Manitobans are spending more time in emergency rooms compared to any other province in Canada and longer than five years ago according to new data.

The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) said Manitobans are in the ER for 13 to 19 hours.

“Manitoba is not unlike Canada as a whole, where over the last few years, length of stays has been increasing,” said Nicole Loreti, a program lead for CIHI.

Nine out of 10 were seen and sent home within 12.7 to 19.1 hours depending on how sick they were.

Prior to the pandemic, most Manitobans spent about seven to 11 hours in ERs before being sent home.

The median length of stay ranged from 4.4 to 6.6 hours for patients who were sent home and 21.7 hours for someone who was admitted.

“It’s been getting worse, year-over-year, since the pandemic. So prior to 2019, wait times were much better. Since the pandemic, we’ve been really challenged with those wait times,” said Dr. Shawn Young, the COO of the Health Sciences Centre (HSC).

He said the combination of loss of staff mixed with taking time to fill positions is to blame, noting the emergency room situation is like a canary in the coal mine.

“It’s about dealing with the ventilation in the coal mine more than it is about putting more canaries down there.”

Leadership is having to get creative while waiting for longer-term fixes like graduating nurses and doctors.

One of those creative stop gaps is the HSC minor treatment clinic.

“The patients that we (filter) from the emergency department that are presenting there, that we then see in the minor treatment clinic, are seen in about a third of the amount of time that they would be seen if they were staying in the emergency department,” said Dr. Manon Pelletier, the chief medical officer at HSC.

Shared Health said the clinic has seen more than 7,000 patients in a year and the wait time has been around two hours.

However, for people like Tessa Dubois who went to the HSC ER for mental health care, that clinic isn’t helping.

“It’s ridiculous. There’s too many people. Not enough doctors,” she said. “You got people coming in and out with bad problems like heart attacks…then you got other people who have mental health problems and literally it’s broken. The system is broken.”

The data is only for time spent in Winnipeg hospital ERs as CIHI said rural health authorities don’t share their data with them.

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