Manitoba has some of Canada’s shortest clinic wait times, report says

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This article was published 24/02/2024 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Even while fighting a doctor shortage and rising wait times, a report from a Canadian tech company that connects patients to local medical clinics says Winnipeggers experience some of the shortest waits at walk-in clinics in the country.

Medimap’s report, published this week, comes from its own software, which tracks wait times at walk-in clinics in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia. The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority’s online hub for walk-in clinic wait times uses Medimap technology.

The national wait time average from Medimap’s data was 68 minutes in 2023, while Winnipeg’s average wait time was 45 minutes — the shortest provincial average, and beaten city-to-city only by Chilliwack, B.C. (44 minutes) and Brampton, Ont. (37 minutes).

Nearby Prairie cities saw much higher average wait times: 76 minutes in Saskatoon, 61 in Regina, 73 in Edmonton and 68 in Calgary.

While it paints a positive picture, it’s also a longer wait than the year before: provincial wait time data collected by Medimap shows Manitoba’s average wait time in 2022 was 31 minutes — 14 minutes less than 2023.

Walk-in clinic wait time averages rose from 2022 to 2023 in all provinces surveyed, except Nova Scotia.

Manitoba’s family doctor shortage is the worst in the country, and Manitobans have the second-fewest number of doctors per capita, according to a report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information late last year.

Manitobans are facing an exacerbated version of issues arising all over the country, Medimap CEO Thomas Jankowski said: doctors are retiring, moving away, and reducing their hours as the population grows and need continues to rise.

“It’s a very lopsided picture,” he said. “The supply is dwindling, the demand is skyrocketing, and it’s causing pressures all over Canada.”

Walk-in wait times are relatively short, compared to waits at emergency departments — recent WRHA data shows 10 per cent of patients at the St. Boniface and Grace Hospital ERs waited more than 14 hours for care in November 2023. While those waits have multiple factors, Jankowski suggested Winnipeggers who could be served by a walk-in clinic are still going to hospital ERs, despite the long waits.

“Manitoba is doing a bit better (than other provinces,) even though … We see ERs in Manitoba doing quite poorly,” he said. “There’s a lot of stress being put on those resources while some of the surrounding walk-in clinics, while the wait times have gotten worse, they still have some capacity.”

Doctors Manitoba called the report “encouraging,” but said the province has a long way to go to tackle long waits for medical care.

“It is encouraging to see this national report finding walk-in clinic wait times here to be (among) the shortest in the country, especially considering we have the fewest family physicians per capita in the nation,” a spokesperson for Doctors Manitoba said in an email Saturday.

“However, Doctors Manitoba remains focused on working with the government to develop solutions for the 150,000 to 200,000 Manitobans who don’t have a family doctor, as well as supporting expansions to hospital capacity to help tackle unreasonably long ER wait times.”

Manitoba Health Coalition interim spokesperson Molly McCracken said she’d like to see the provincial NDP make good on their promise to commit to “team-based” care, which brings together health care professionals that provide a range of services working in one neighbourhood clinic.

The federal government announced it would be sending $633 million in health care funding to address staff shortages, emergency care waits and senior care. McCracken said time will tell how far that funding goes for Manitoba, considering what she described as a “trend” of cuts to health care since 2016.

“The bilateral agreement’s a good start, but we’ll have to see how far that gets us,” she said.

“Because (health care funding) was severely cut for so long, will it replace the money that’s needed, and then take us further? Which is what we really need it to do.”