Spin aside, ER wait times not improving

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This article was published 09/01/2025 (296 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dr. Shawn Young, the chief operating officer at Health Sciences Centre — where a middle-aged man died after spending eight hours in the emergency department Tuesday — said wait times at the hospital’s ER have improved over the past year.

That’s not entirely true.

Statistically, there’s been a tiny year-over-year improvement in ER wait times at HSC. The most recent available data show the median ER wait time was 3.77 hours in November, down slightly from 3.9 hours in November 2023. That is statistically insignificant. It would be more accurate to say ER wait times at HSC are largely unchanged from a year ago.

Young also didn’t say that ER wait times at HSC peaked in November 2023. They increased significantly and steadily from 2017 to 2023, after the former Progressive Conservative government announced the consolidation of acute care hospitals in Winnipeg, including the closure of three ERs.

To compare with a year ago while ignoring the previous six years is misleading. It gives the impression hospital overcrowding is improving. when it isn’t.

Here’s a more accurate assessment: the median ER wait time at HSC has more than tripled since November 2017, when it was 1.18 hours, Winnipeg Regional Health Authority data show.

The median wait time is the point at which half of patients wait longer and half wait less to see a doctor or nurse practitioner.

Wait times fluctuate from month to month. In the fall of 2017 and into the winter of 2018, the median ER wait time at HSC was at or below two hours. It increased to more than three hours by 2022 and has remained well above three hours ever since, peaking in November 2023.

ER wait times at HSC have actually increased in recent months, from 3.17 hours in September 2024 to 3.53 hours in October and 3.77 hours in November.

That is the information Young should have communicated to the public. Instead, he delivered political spin.

“They’re not where we want them to be,” Young said of wait times during a Tuesday news conference. “It’s going to be a long time before we get them to where we want them to be.”

Where, exactly, does HSC want them to be? Back to 2017 levels, when they were well below two hours? What is the plan to get there? So far, the public hasn’t heard one from HSC, Shared Health or the NDP government, beyond vague platitudes about adding more staff.

We won’t know for some time why the man died in the ER Tuesday morning. He was assessed as a low-acuity patient, which means on the Canadian triage and acuity scale (which assigns patients a number from one to five, one being the most acute), he was likely triaged as a four or a five. Under hospital protocol, he should have been re-assessed periodically.

Young said he didn’t know how often the man had been re-assessed. The patient’s condition deteriorated after about eight hours, and he was taken to a resuscitation room, where he died.

Either he was not assessed properly in the first place, or there were aspects of his condition that were not easily detectable. The public will learn more after the matter is thoroughly investigated. Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara ordered a critical incident investigation into the death Wednesday.

We know the hospital was, as usual, overcrowded. There is a shortage of hospital beds on medical wards, which has been the case for at least seven years. That means many ER patients sick enough to be admitted to hospital could not be transferred to a hospital bed. Instead, they piled up in the emergency department, and ER doctors and nurses, who are already short-staffed, had less time to see new patients. That’s what drives up wait times and makes for unsafe ERs.

Low-acuity patients wait longer, and high-acuity patients are seen first. But this case is a stark reminder of how long wait times for low-acuity patients, which are typically more than 10 hours at HSC, can end in disaster. Just because a patient is triaged as a four or a five doesn’t necessarily mean they can wait 10 hours or more for care. There might be hidden conditions that should be addressed sooner rather than later.

This incident should come as no great surprise. There is a severe shortage of staffed medical beds not only at HSC, but at all Winnipeg hospitals.

The number of licensed hospital beds at HSC declined from 791 in 2020-21 to 781 in 2023-24, Shared Health’s 2023-24 annual report states. Average bed occupancy during that period increased from 83.45 per cent to a staggering 98.2 per cent. That means on average, there is barely no extra capacity in the hospital to absorb surges in patient demand.

There is also a shortage of personal care home beds and other off-site, long-term treatment options for patients who should be moved out of hospital. Together, this causes hospital congestion and creates bottlenecks in emergency departments and urgent care centres.

The problem is far worse today at HSC and most other Winnipeg hospitals than it was two, five or seven years ago. At best, it has stabilized since November 2023. But to characterize ER wait times or hospital congestion as having improved over the past year is simply not true.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca

Tom Brodbeck
Columnist

Tom Brodbeck is an award-winning author and columnist with 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.