Winnipeg ER wait times holding steady, but more work needs to be done: WRHA
Winnipeg’s health authority says emergency department wait times are moving in the right direction, but more work is needed for them to continue to come down.
The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA) released wait time data for urgent care centres and emergency departments in April. For Winnipeg, the median time for patients waiting to be seen sat at 2.87 hours, an increase of approximately four minutes from March.
The WRHA said several new initiatives have been ongoing to help reduce wait times, including an increase in moving alternative level of care patients from hospitals to long-term care centres and moving patients who live outside of Winnipeg to sites in their home health region.
“We have seen a steady drop in the number of alternate level of care patients over the past month,” said Mike Nader, WRHA CEO, saying earlier in the week the number reached a low of 98 patients in Winnipeg. The daily average of alternate level of care patients in April was 151.
Nader added Winnipeg was also able to repatriate 162 patients to sites in their home region so far this month, up from 139 in April.
Despite the successes, Dr. Shawn Young, chief operating officer with Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg, said it will still take time for wait times to come down.
“The bad news is these patient flow issues didn't materialize overnight, and they unfortunately won't be resolved overnight either,” he said. “These are long-standing issues that existed for years and were made exponentially worse by the pandemic.”
Young added staffing has been a challenge in recent months.
“We only at the end of April got all of our redeployed and reassigned staff back to their regular work,” he said. “So that's only been less than a month that we've actually got our staff doing the work that they normally do.”
The WRHA said it is hoping the initiatives will begin to show more of an impact on wait times next month.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
BREAKING Legendary hockey broadcaster Bob Cole dies at 90: CBC
Bob Cole, a welcome voice for Canadian hockey fans for a half-century, has died at the age of 90. Cole died Wednesday night in St. John's, N.L., surrounded by his family, his daughter, Megan Cole, told the CBC.
Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction overturned by N.Y. appeals court
New York's highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction, reversing a landmark ruling of the #MeToo era in determining the trial judge improperly allowed women to testify about allegations against the ex-movie mogul that weren't part of the case.
2 teens charged in Halifax homicide: police
Two teenagers have been charged with second-degree murder in connection to an alleged homicide near the Halifax Shopping Centre earlier this week.
MPP Sarah Jama asked to leave Ontario legislature for wearing keffiyeh
MPP Sarah Jama was asked to leave the Legislative Assembly of Ontario by House Speaker Ted Arnott on Thursday for wearing a keffiyeh, a garment that is banned at Queen’s Park.
12-year-old hippo in Japan raised as a male discovered to be a female
When Gen-chan arrived at a zoo in Japan in 2017, no one questioned whether the then-five-year-old hippopotamus was a boy. Seven years later, zoo staff made a surprising discovery: Gen-chan, now 12, was female.
Honda to get up to $5B in govt help for EV battery, assembly plants
Honda is set to build an electric vehicle battery plant next to its Alliston, Ont., assembly plant, which it is retooling to produce fully electric vehicles, all part of a $15-billion project that is expected to include up to $5 billion in public money.
'Deep ignorance': Calls for Manitoba trustee to resign sparked after comments about Indigenous people and reconciliation
A rural Manitoba school trustee is facing calls to resign over comments he made about Indigenous people and residential schools earlier this week.
CTE: Researchers believe widespread brain injury may contribute to veteran suicide rate
Researchers are working to better understand if some Canadian military veterans may be suffering from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, also known as CTE -- a disorder previously found in the brains of professional football and hockey players after their death.
1 arrested in northern Alberta during public shelter order
Residents of John D'Or Prairie, a community on the Little Red River Cree Nation in northern Alberta, were told to take shelter Thursday morning during a police operation.