WHRA pins wait-times bump on flu season

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This article was published 31/01/2019 (2604 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg health officials are blaming an earlier flu season and greater numbers of sick people for a jump in wait times at the city’s emergency rooms and urgent care centres in December.

The median wait at all hospitals rose to 1.75 hours compared with 1.5 hours in November 2018 and 1.63 hours a year earlier.

The longest median waits in December occurred at Concordia Hospital (2.32 hours) followed by St. Boniface Hospital (2.10), while the shortest occurred at Children’s Hospital (1.53 hours), Victoria General Hospital urgent care (1.57) and Health Sciences Centre (1.62).

All city emergency rooms and urgent care centres had longer waits in December than in November, and all but Grace Hospital had longer waits this past December compared with the previous one.

Krista Williams, chief health operations officer with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, said while this year’s flu outbreak is not as serious as last year’s, it struck earlier, affecting ERs and urgent care centres in December.

“Year after year, we know that our peak wait times go hand in hand with our peak flu season and winter season. So we expected that there would be some impact over the winter season to our wait times,” Williams told a media briefing Thursday.

She said December experienced a greater number of ambulances arriving at Winnipeg ERs, more hospitalizations, and a higher number of sick people in general compared with the previous two years.

Waits at Grace Hospital were impacted by a CT scanner going down for five days, while ER service at Concordia was affected by a move of a surgical unit to that hospital, Williams said. St. Boniface waits were affected by an increase in cardiac patients and ambulance arrivals, she said.

The Winnipeg hospital system is undergoing the most significant reorganization in decades. Misericordia Health Centre saw its urgent care centre close, while Victoria’s ER was converted to an urgent care centre. Several other health services have been relocated.

Coming up this year, Concordia and Seven Oaks General hospitals will lose their ERs. A walk-in clinic will be located at Concordia, while the ER at Seven Oaks will be replaced by an urgent care centre.

NDP Leader Wab Kinew said the latest patient waits report shows the Pallister government should abandon plans to close the Concordia and Seven Oaks ERs.

“It’s particularly an issue at St. Boniface Hospital, which is going to bear the brunt of the redirected traffic if Concordia closes,” he said, noting the St. B ER is in need of an upgrade.

Darlene Jackson, president of the 12,000-member Manitoba Nurses Union, said local emergency room waits have risen since the WRHA began implementing its hospital reforms in October 2017.

“If the plan was working, we should have seen wait times drop below what they were when the changes were implemented,” she said. “Clearly this ‘transformation’ is not having the intended effect.”

However, Williams said the full potential of the hospital reforms, which will consolidate emergency room care at three hospitals, have yet to be felt.

“There is short-term impact from making some of these changes, but we are confident that with the foundational changes we’re making will be sustainable into the future,” she said.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca