‘Hard truths’: Indigenous, Black patients wait longer to be seen in Winnipeg hospitals

Race-based data collected from Winnipeg hospital emergency department patients show racism can be a factor that affects wait times and care, the project’s lead said Tuesday.

“Today, we’re talking about some hard truths,” Dr. Marcia Anderson said at a news conference Tuesday with Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara and Dr. Shawn Young, chief operating officer of the Health Sciences Centre.

Anderson said adult African/Black adult patients waited the longest to be seen (an average of 5.5 hours between patient assessment and treatment at Health Sciences Centre), data collected from May 2023 to September 2024 show. Indigenous adults waited the second longest at 5.3 hours. Those who identified as white had the shortest wait at 4.1 hours. The average Manitoba wait time for all ages was 3.4 hours.

The findings will be used as a “benchmark,” she said.

“Going forward, we hope to be able to share markers of progress,” said Anderson, vice-dean of Indigenous health, social justice and anti-racism at the University of Manitoba’s Rady Faculty of Health Sciences.

Manitoba hospitals became the first in Canada to collect voluntary data about patients’ race, ethnicity and Indigenous identity. The information was gathered by Shared Health in collaboration with the U of M’s Ongomiizwin Indigenous Institute of Health and Healing and the George & Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation.

• Read the report: Race, Ethnicity & Indigenous Identity Data: Emergency Department Visits & Care (PDF)

Hospital patients were asked to self-identify during registration, and of 618,803 responses, 50.7 per cent identified as white, nearly 37 per cent as Indigenous, nearly four per cent as Filipino, and 2.8 per cent as African and/or Black.

“Unfortunately, in a system under stress, it is often those who are the most marginalized and have the fewest resources who are impacted the most.”–Dr. Marcia Anderson

Those who identified as Indigenous were mostly likely to leave hospital without being seen by a physician (16.7 per cent).

The collection of data is critical to accurately measure and demonstrate specific health disparities, Anderson said.

The report says there are more low-acuity emergency department visits by Indigenous patients compared to their population size in Manitoba, but that doesn’t mean they’re “frequent flyers” who use ERs inappropriately, she said.

It may reflect gaps in health care and lower access to other forms of care, such as family doctors, that result in more ER visits, she said.

“Unfortunately, in a system under stress, it is often those who are the most marginalized and have the fewest resources who are impacted the most,” Anderson said.

The percentage of patients, meanwhile, who presented as the most ill and triaged with higher acuity were similar across the board.

Anderson said what surprised her in the findings was that the vast majority of patients who leave against medical advice are Indigenous — 63.5 per cent. Those who leave without being seen, including patients triaged with a higher acuity, are most often Indigenous.

“I think what that points to, for us, is there is more work to be done and more supports we can offer ensuring the building of a positive therapeutic environment and accessing the strength of all members of the health-care team and supporting each patient who needs the health care that we can receive,” Anderson said.

“That would be a priority for me — to see some of those numbers coming down.”

Asagwara said people who deliver care also experience racism, which can contribute to burnout.

“As a black nurse, I’ve felt systemic racism,” the health minister, a registered psychiatric nurse, said. “Those working on the front lines should not be blamed for this. We all participate in it.”

The findings released Tuesday are not unique to Manitoba, Asagwara said. The systemic failure to provide adequate care to an increasingly racially diverse population is a national issue that the province is committed to addressing, the minister said.

The collection of race and ethnicity data is a response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action No. 19 — for governments to identify and close the gaps in health-care outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. A steering committee is helping design steps to eliminate racism in the health-care system, with training for students and staff.

The report’s highlights “all seem consistent with the anecdotal evidence that we have been hearing for a very long time,” said lawyer Vilko Zbogar, who represented the family of Brian Sinclair in a civil case after he died in 2008 at the HSC emergency department.

Sinclair, a 45-year-old Indigenous man and double-amputee who used a wheelchair, sat for 34 hours in the waiting room without being questioned or treated by hospital staff. Zbogar said he hadn’t had a chance to read the full report Tuesday, but knows racism is still a concern in health care.

“Indeed I am now representing another Indigenous man — Justin Flett — who was triaged as a 5 (the lowest acuity) when he had life-threatening appendicitis and was discharged from a hospital in The Pas without being properly diagnosed, leading to his harrowing journey to Winnipeg to seek life-saving surgery,” Zbogar said in an email.

Flett, a Tataskweyak Cree Nation man who lives in Winnipeg, filed a lawsuit following the 2023 incident naming the Northern Health Region, Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and a doctor at The Pas hospital as defendants. The doctor has since filed a statement of defence.

— with files from Scott Billeck

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca