Something terribly wrong is going on at St. Boniface Hospital.
All hospitals in Winnipeg have overcrowding and long wait times, but it’s especially bad — dangerous even — at St. Boniface, where emergency room wait times continue to climb, putting patient care in jeopardy.
New data released by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority last week show the longest wait time for nine out of 10 patients to see a doctor at the St. B ER was a staggering 14 hours in April. That’s up from 11.48 hours in March.
New data released by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority last week show the longest wait time for nine out of 10 patients to see a doctor at the St. B ER was a staggering 14 hours in April which is up from 11.48 hours in March. (John Woods / The Canadian Press files)
The numbers had come down from 16 hours in January, when respiratory illnesses were putting added strain on all ERs and urgent care centres. They have continued to fall somewhat or remained the same at most ERs and urgent care centres in Winnipeg since then. But not at St. Boniface, where they’re climbing again.
The median ER wait time at St. Boniface Hospital in April (the point at which half of patients wait longer and half wait less) was 5.22 hours, up from 4.7 hours the month before. It’s the highest among all ERs and urgent care centres in Winnipeg.
Respiratory illnesses can’t be blamed for the growing wait times. As per the province’s weekly respiratory surveillance report, the number of respiratory visits to emergency rooms in Manitoba fell slightly in April compared with the previous month.
The reality is, the three acute care hospitals in Winnipeg (St. Boniface, Health Sciences Centre and Grace Hospital) simply don’t have the capacity to meet the demand that has been placed on them since hospital operations were amalgamated between 2017 and 2019.
They don’t have enough front-line workers — especially nurses — to staff the medical and other beds needed to meet the demand. When that happens, patients sick enough to be admitted to hospital wait in emergency department hallways on gurneys sometimes for days. The more admitted patients there are in ERs waiting to be transferred to a medical ward, the less time ER staff have to treat incoming patients. That drives up ER wait times.
The situation at St. Boniface Hospital, the cardiac care centre of Manitoba, is a crisis. It’s showing no signs of improvement. In fact, it’s getting worse.
So where is the plan by the province and health authorities to do something about it? Nowhere. It appears severe hospital overcrowding has become the accepted norm, even under a new provincial government that has vowed to increase hospital capacity and bring down wait times.
It’s still too early to blame the NDP for the hospital overcrowding problem left by the former Tory government. The NDP has only been in office seven months. Still, there doesn’t appear to be a concrete, realistic plan in place to address the problem.
When the former Tory government announced its hospital amalgamation plan in 2017, it insisted there would be adequate capacity at the three acute care hospitals to meet the expected growth in demand. That didn’t happen.
Hospital overcrowding not only forces patients to wait as long as 14 to 16 hours in ERs, it results in substandard care of those waiting in hallways for a medical bed. The lack of capacity also causes hospitals to postpone elective surgery to free up beds. It results in burnout for front-line workers, contributes to staff turnover and causes a growing number of patients to leave hospital without being treated.
Patient overcrowding affects all aspects of hospital operations and it bottlenecks in emergency departments.
The current government insists it has a plan to recruit and retain more front-line staff, including nurses, to address the problem. So far, we’ve seen little to no evidence of that.
Naturally it will take time to reverse the effects of the former government’s poorly executed amalgamation plan. Health authorities can’t hire front-line staff if those staff don’t exist. But it appears no progress has been made over the past seven months.
If progress had been made, we would see early signs of falling ER wait times. Instead, wait times at every ER and urgent care centre in Winnipeg were longer in April than they were the same month a year earlier.
At some point, this will become an NDP problem. At the moment, the government doesn’t seem prepared for it.
Tom Brodbeck
Columnist
Tom Brodbeck is a columnist with the Free Press and has over 30 years experience in print media. He joined the Free Press in 2019. Born and raised in Montreal, Tom graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1993 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and commerce. Read more about Tom.
Tom provides commentary and analysis on political and related issues at the municipal, provincial and federal level. His columns are built on research and coverage of local events. The Free Press’s editing team reviews Tom’s columns before they are posted online or published in print – part of the Free Press’s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
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