More patients leaving HSC ER without seeing doctor: Shared Health

The Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg is pictured on June 27, 2022. (CTV News Photo Michelle Gerwing)

Hundreds of patients are walking out of the Health Sciences Centre (HSC)'s emergency room every month without seeing a doctor, according to new statistics.

Shared Health says more than 30 per cent of patients who visited the ER in July left before receiving treatment. Statistics show those numbers have been going up every month since spring.

A total of 1,302 patients left in May. In June that number went up to 1,305, and the increase continued into July with 1,395 patients leaving the ER without receiving treatment.

Darlene Jackson with the Manitoba Nurse's Union says wait times are driving patients away as the system deals with staff shortages and backlogs. "We're seeing wait times that are skyrocketing," said Jackson. "There just aren't enough bodies in health care to manage all of our patients."

HSC chief operating officer Dr. Shawn Young says the number of people leaving without being seen by a doctor is concerning. "The staffing shortages alone have been a big driver of why we can't move patients through the system very effectively," he said.

Young adds that beds are filling up with admitted patients in the ER, causing a backlog. As well, the system as a whole lost staff during the pandemic.

Young says patients with non-emergency cases are still ending in up emergency rooms or urgent care hospitals, when they should be going to access centres, walk-in clinics or their own doctor instead.

"We need to actually re-create or revisit what we're doing with our care pathways," said Young. "We can't keep sending people to emergency departments for care, we have to be much more strategic."

Shared Health says nurse recruitment and retention efforts are ongoing.