Chronic blame game festers

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara doesn’t mince words when describing how bad things are in the province’s emergency departments and urgent-care centres.

“The wait times that we are seeing in Manitoba are unacceptable,” said Asagwara in an interview with the Free Press.

“We have yet to see the impact of those additional resources reflected in lower ER wait times.”

“I hear from families, I hear from providers, I hear from Manitobans who are concerned about the wait times that they’re seeing, that they’re experiencing, and those concerns are valid — I share those concerns.”

So what is the NDP, who promised voters nearly three years ago it had the answers to bring down wait times, doing about it?

A lot, according to Asagwara, who has been the province’s health minister since the NDP was sworn into office in October 2023.

For starters, the province has added a net 4,500 new health-care workers to the system, said Asagwara, who uses they/them pronouns.

There are more personal-care-home beds than there were in 2023 and the province has opened 145 transitional care unit beds to help transfer patients out of hospital into more appropriate care settings.

Home-care services have been enhanced (including lower staff vacancy rates and fewer cancellations of scheduled visits), hospitals now have seven-day-a-week discharge policies to help improve patient flow, and more social workers have been hired to help hospital patients access community supports, they said.

“That being said, we also know that these wait times in our emergency departments continue to be unacceptably long and affect real people every single day,” said Asagwara.

“I would certainly like to see progress much more quickly in terms of our emergency departments and urgent-care wait times.”

To do that, the province is doing everything it can to increase capacity in hospitals and in the community, Asagwara said.

“There’s no single fix,” they said. “We are tackling this challenge from every single angle possible.”

But when asked when Manitobans can expect to see wait times fall — or how many more personal-care-home beds, home-care services and other community-support services are needed — the minister didn’t directly answer, saying only that they will continue to build more capacity.

That should have been done years ago, said the minister, who continues to blame the previous Progressive Conservative government for making cuts to health care.

“The health-care system was on the brink of collapse under the previous government,” Asagwara said.

For some critics, that message is getting old, especially for a government that’s been in office nearly three years.

“I’m tired of the blame game,” said Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson.

She says nurses on the front line are not seeing any meaningful changes under the NDP and continue to see patient care deteriorate.

“We’re seeing patients that are slipping through the cracks, that we’re missing things on,” said Jackson.

And despite claims by the NDP that government is listening to front-line staff, nurses say they’re not being heard, said Jackson.

“Nurses feel like they have just been abandoned by this government,” said Jackson, who says relations between the MNU and government are so bad, she no longer has a working relationship with the health minister.

“I am not going to be a cheerleader for a government that is falling down, that is not fulfilling their promises and is not doing what’s best for health care and best for our citizens in this province.”

Opposition Tory health critic Kathleen Cook said if the NDP were truly doing all the things they claim to be doing to bring down ER wait times, Manitobans would see tangible results.

“Why do ER wait times continue to climb?” she said. “Why are we seeing record high median ER wait times?”

Both Cook and Jackson also question the number of health-care staff Asagwara claims have been added to the system.

“I don’t trust their numbers,” said Jackson.

Cook says the opposition has repeatedly asked the minster for a breakdown of where all the new staff are working but have not received a clear answer.

“We have yet to see the impact of those additional resources reflected in lower ER wait times,” said Cook.

“If they were making the right investments, I think if they were listening to front-line workers and making the changes that are required then we would start to see things moving in the right direction. But instead we’re seeing ER wait times continue to increase.”

Asagwara disputes claims by critics that government isn’t listening. One of the first things the NDP did when it came to power was embark on a “listening tour” to hear directly from front-line workers, the minister said.

Government continues to communicate with front-line staff and has teams of experts working to solve long wait times, they said.

“We’re a listening government,” said Asagwara, who is a psychiatric nurse. “We have shown up in ERs, in ICUs on the front lines. I make myself as a minister very accessible to listen to front-line providers.”

In fact, many of the changes and improvements made to the system were the result of consultations with front-line staff, they said.

“These are the folks who are actually guiding and informing the decisions that we make as a government and how we invest in health care,” said the minister.

“They continue to show up for Manitobans each and every day and we cannot thank them enough for the work that they do for Manitobans.”

tom.brodbeck@winnipegfreepress.com