The ‘fix’ is a fantasy as dysfunctional health-care system fails Manitobans on multiple fronts

If you’ve been stuck in a Winnipeg emergency room wondering why you’re waiting longer than ever to see a doctor, you’re not imagining it.

New numbers are in, and they paint a grim picture of a health-care system still in crisis.

According to the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority’s 2024-25 annual report released this week, emergency room and urgent care wait times have jumped 36 per cent over the past three years.

The 90th percentile wait time — meaning nine out of 10 patients are seen faster and one in 10 waits longer — has ballooned from 7.6 hours in 2022-23 to 10.3 hours in 2024-25.

That’s a staggering increase, especially considering the WRHA report does not include Health Sciences Centre — Manitoba’s largest and busiest emergency department — which is operated separately by Shared Health (it has yet to release its 2024-25 annual report).

Meanwhile, the most recent ER and urgent care wait times reported online by the WRHA (which includes HSC) show the median wait time hit a new record of 4.02 hours in September (the 90th percentile continued to grow to 11.2 hours).

This is a serious crisis. And it’s not what the NDP, now in government for just over two years, promised voters during the 2023 provincial election.

The WRHA doesn’t sugar-coat the problem. It points to “surges in demand during respiratory season, challenges to discharge, and staffing shortages in critical areas of the health-care system” as key drivers behind worsening wait times.

The report also admits that wait times “are above provincial targets” and that efforts to expand programs or open new units are routinely stymied by recruitment challenges. Manitoba simply can’t hire and retain enough nurses, doctors and support staff to keep the system running smoothly.

This has become a defining feature of Manitoba’s health-care woes — a system stretched to its limits, with clogged hospital wards and patients waiting hours, sometimes half a day, to be seen. Those sick enough to be admitted to hospital often end up staying days in the emergency department because there are no available beds on medical wards.

One of the most telling statistics in the WRHA report is the percentage of people who leave the ER or urgent care centre before seeing a doctor or nurse practitioner. That number climbed from 11.1 per cent in 2022-23 to 15.4 per cent in 2024-25.

Much of the gridlock starts after patients are finally admitted. The average length of stay for inpatients — how long someone remains in hospital — has climbed from 10.09 days in 2022-23 to 10.89 days in 2024-25.

That may not sound like a significant increase, but that number has to shrink to improve patient flow through hospitals, and to ultimately reduce wait times.

Hospitals can’t discharge patients quickly enough because of a shortage of transitional and long-term care spaces. When there’s nowhere for recovering or elderly patients to go — whether it’s home care, rehabilitation or a personal-care home — the entire system backs up.

The WRHA says this “flow” problem — the movement of people between hospitals, home care and long-term care — remains a major challenge. It’s the bureaucratic bottleneck at the core of Manitoba’s health-care dysfunction.

To the WRHA’s credit, there have been some modest expansions. The report notes that 67 new hospital beds have been added on surgical and medical wards over the past year — 36 at St. Boniface Hospital and 31 at Grace Hospital. Two additional critical-care beds were also opened at St. Boniface, with four more planned for next year.

But in the big picture, the total number of beds across Winnipeg hospitals — excluding Health Sciences Centre — remains virtually unchanged.

There were 2,242 staffed beds at WRHA hospitals in 2024-25, down slightly from 2,244 in the previous three years, according to the report. Grace Hospital gained 20 beds last year, but other facilities lost or maintained the same number, effectively cancelling out the gains.

(Those figures are calculated on April 1 of each fiscal year and don’t include beds opened since April 1, 2024. So it wouldn’t capture the additional 67 beds added since then).

Either way, it’s hardly enough to keep up with a growing population and an aging demographic that requires more acute and long-term care

These numbers aren’t just statistics — they’re symptoms of a health-care system that continues to fail the people it’s supposed to serve.

The Kinew government insists it’s listening to front-line workers and making the investments needed to “fix” health care. But until those efforts translate into shorter waits, better staffing and more hospital capacity, that promise will sound as hollow as ever.

For now, the hard truth is this: emergency room and urgent care wait times in Winnipeg are at record highs.

The system remains gridlocked. And even as government touts expansions and future fixes, too many Manitobans are still waiting and suffering.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca