WINNIPEG -- Wait times were up at emergency and urgent care departments across Winnipeg in August, the first full month under a new emergency care scheme that saw three of the city’s emergency departments converted to urgent care.
The Seven Oaks emergency department closed and reopened as urgent care on July 22, following a similar transition at the Concordia Hospital on June 3. The emergency department at Victoria Hospital was turned into an urgent care in 2017, the same year the province began its overhaul of the health-care system.
According to numbers from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, the median wait across all ERs and urgent care centres in August of this year was 1.86 hours, up from 1.52 hours in August 2018.
The trend was felt across the board -- every hospital in Winnipeg had a longer median wait time in August 2019 compared to August 2018.
Most hospitals also experienced an increase in August compared to the previous month, with the exception of Concordia and the emergency department at the HSC Children’s Hospital.
In a statement, Krista Williams, chief health operations officer for the WRHA, said while the numbers aren’t what they’re aiming for, change within the system has been ongoing and a period of adjustment that impacts wait times in the short-term was inevitable.
“Our focus now turns to stabilizing our system, and giving new systems, teams and protocols the time they need to adjust and calibrate to the changes that have been made. We remain confident that the changes we’ve made as a part of Healing our Health System will decrease wait times for the long term once the changes have had the opportunity to take root,” said Williams.
Williams also emphasized patient safety as the health region’s top priority, credited staff and physicians for their work to improve the health-care system and said they’re still aiming to reach or surpass the Canadian median ER wait time of 1.2 hours by spring of 2021.
