Health-care overhaul can’t stay on hold

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/01/2024 (594 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Avoid shovelling heavy snow and steer clear of icy patches while you’re at it. Take every precaution to avoid contracting one of several currently rampaging respiratory viruses. Keep away from all possible allergens. Don’t dare pick up a power tool.

Even mildly risky activities are ill-advised while Manitoba’s health-care system continues to operate in a distressing state of emergency.

Struck down by an acute injury or illness despite your best efforts? Expect an extended wait at all local emergency departments. Hopefully not as long, however, as one patient’s recent marathon session in St. Boniface Hospital’s ER waiting room.

Last week, a Winnipeg woman reportedly spent 33 hours in triage before being admitted. Unfortunately, the situation is neither exceptional nor uncommon.

Earlier this month, an Ontario doctor stepped in to advocate from afar for her elderly mother, who was facing an estimated 30-hour wait at the city’s largest hospital. The woman ended up waiting 17 hours to be seen, an outcome her daughter, an ER doctor herself, rightly described as “insane.”

It’s a miracle more people haven’t died.

In 2023, two patients died while awaiting care in Winnipeg emergency departments. The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority has opened a critical incident investigation into the latest case, during which a patient died after spending 33 hours in the Grace Hospital waiting room in November.

Hospital wait times have been growing steadily since 2020 and remain well above pre-pandemic levels. This situation harms the public and health-care workers who are struggling to safely provide care amid chronic staffing shortages. It’s a situation that demands a decisive treatment plan — something Manitoba’s NDP have thus far failed to deliver.

It’s true that the party has an uphill battle following the problematic health-care overhaul initiated by the previous Progressive Conservative government. In his attempt to cut costs and streamline services, former premier Brian Pallister created a working environment ill-equipped to handle the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic. In her attempt to address the fallout, successor Heather Stefanson green-lighted the establishment of a surgical backlog task force that has produced embarrassingly dismal results.

Free Press reporting has uncovered the scope of the embarrassment. Fewer than 800 people have received out-of-province medical procedures at a cost of $37 million since the establishment of the task force in 2021. The task force also spent more than $7.6 million on salaries over that period — proving that the exercise was neither cost-effective nor practically effective.

The NDP made the right decision to disband the task force shortly after being elected. What the party hasn’t yet provided is an answer to how they plan on addressing the diagnostic and surgical backlog that still exists.

In a year-end interview with the Free Press, Premier Wab Kinew pointed to health care as one of the government’s top priorities. He discussed the need to overhaul the province’s health authorities and reverse-engineer the health system to focus on the needs of patients and front-line staff. How exactly this latest overhaul is set to roll out remains a mystery.

Mr. Kinew and his cabinet ministers have been saying all the right things when it comes to the health-care file. But patience for rhetoric, among the public and health workers, is quickly running thin.

Manitoba’s overburdened hospitals can’t afford more “listening tours” or generalized promises.

Manitobans need a plan.

Stat.