Manitoba health minister calls emergency room patient death a ‘devastating loss’ – Winnipeg

Manitoba’s health minister, Uzoma Asagwara, says the death of a patient who waited eight hours for care in the emergency room at Health Sciences Centre (HSC) is a “devastating loss” that the health care system needs to learn from.

“This tragedy makes it very clear that there’s much more work that needs to be done, and there’s more we need to learn from this devastating loss, and from folks on the front lines, in terms of what further steps we need to take,” said Asagwara.

Asagwara promised the man’s death on Tuesday morning will be treated as a critical incident, with the “highest level of urgency,” to prevent other deaths in the future.

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HSC officials say the man had been triaged as “low acuity,” and there were approximately 100 patients in the ER at any given time that morning.

Data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information shows Manitoba has some of the longest ER waits in the country. The longest-waiting 10 per cent of patients are in the ER for an average of 7.7 hours at HSC, and 12 hours at St. Boniface Hospital. The national average for that group of patients is 5.2 hours.

Doctors Manitoba said in a statement says long wait times are caused by “insufficient capacity” to get patients out of the ER and into hospital beds. When the whole health care system backs up, the emergency room becomes a choke point.

Fifty-five per cent of the province’s doctors report experiencing “moral distress” because they believe they can’t deliver a high enough standard of care, according to Doctors Manitoba. They add only 36 per cent of physicians believe they have the resources they need.

Minister Asagwara promised to improve these conditions, by continuing to address staffing and capacity issues.

“We know there’s so much work for us to do, to make sure there’s more capacity and resources in the system to better support doctors and health care workers in Manitoba, and we’re going to continue to do that work,” said Asagwara.

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