NDP promise to ‘end hallway medicine’ rings hollow for neglected senior’s grieving family

The death of 82-year-old Genevieve Price after waiting more than 30 hours in a Winnipeg emergency room is heartbreaking and unacceptable.

But it was also entirely predictable.

We can all express outrage, offer condolences and demand answers. But let’s not pretend this tragedy came out of nowhere.

Manitoba’s ER wait times have been spiralling to historic highs for months, even as the NDP government has surpassed the midpoint of its mandate — a mandate built on solemn promises to shorten those very waits.

Every warning light possible has been flashing. Every indicator has been trending in the wrong direction. Yet little has changed on the ground.

So yes, this death is devastating. But shocking? Hardly.

When a patient — an elderly woman with a possible infection — spends more than 30 hours in an ER hallway before receiving the care she urgently needs, the system hasn’t just failed. It has collapsed.

And unless something changes soon, this won’t be the last obituary linked to a health-care system teetering on the edge.

Before her rapid decline, Genevieve Price was an independent grandmother, a devoted member of her church and a source of strength for her family. She wasn’t frail, isolated or without support.

She did everything you’re supposed to do when seeking medical treatment. She sought help early. She followed medical advice. Her daughter advocated for her. She waited patiently for care.

And still, she fell through the cracks.

Her ordeal unfolded over several days, starting with swelling in her hand and ending with organ failure, sepsis, a heart attack and a scramble to save her life that began far too late.

What happened in those 30 hours at the Grace Hospital is now the subject of not one, but two investigations: a WRHA critical-incident review and a second probe ordered by Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara.

But we don’t need a panel of experts to tell us what the root cause is.

ERs are overwhelmed. Staff are overworked. Patient flow is broken. The system simply does not have the capacity to care for the volume and acuity of patients coming through the doors.

That has been true for years, but never more true than it is today.

The NDP was elected more than two years ago on a promise to “fix health care” and “end hallway medicine.” ER wait times were supposed to fall.

The latest data, released Friday by the WRHA, shows the median wait time for ERs and urgent-care centres was 3.83 hours, one of the highest in at least eight years.

The 90th percentile wait (where nine out of 10 patients experience shorter wait times) was 10.3 hours, also historically high (it was over 12 hours at Grace Hospital and 13 hours at St. Boniface Hospital).

Median ER and urgent-care wait times in Winnipeg hit an all-time high of just over four hours in September. They’re more than double what they were in 2017.

Michelle Price — a nurse since 1995 — says she doesn’t blame the health-care workers who cared for her mother. Of course she doesn’t. They are drowning. They don’t have the staff, space or time to provide timely assessments for patients who aren’t flagged as immediately life-threatening.

That’s how tragedies happen.

Sepsis doesn’t wait for an empty bed. Organ failure doesn’t pause for an overcapacity alert to clear. Medical emergencies don’t politely queue.

When ER waits stretch past 20, 25, 30 hours, patients who appear stable can deteriorate quickly. This is precisely why ER performance isn’t just a statistic. It can be life and death.

The WRHA’s critical-incident review will examine whether communication broke down, whether tests were delayed, whether protocols were followed.

Asagwara’s secondary review will look for systemic failures.

But the systemic failure is already obvious.

The province still has no credible, enforceable plan to reduce ER wait times.

The Price family believes Genevieve’s death could have been prevented. They’re almost certainly right.

If she had been assessed sooner, if her infection had been treated aggressively, if her deterioration had been noticed earlier, the outcome may have been very different.

That’s what makes this case a symbol of something larger: a system so backlogged that even patients who present early can deteriorate while waiting.

It’s not enough for the government to express condolences or to promise accountability after the fact. Manitobans have heard that script too many times from too many governments.

We don’t need more reviews. We need action.

That means surge staffing and it means improving patient flow across the hospital system, not just in ERs. It means reducing procedural bottlenecks and freeing up beds by accelerating discharges for patients who no longer need acute care.

It means enforcing the basics of timely triage and reassessment, which break down when staff are stretched too thin.

Michelle Price says nothing will bring back her mother, but she hopes the tragedy prompts systemic change. She has more faith in that possibility than many Manitobans do.

Because without decisive intervention, there will be more critical-incident reviews, more midnight phone calls to families and more loved ones who walked into an ER expecting help and never went home.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca