Manitoba’s health minister has requested that the death of a man waiting in an emergency department waiting room should be declared a critical incident and that a review take place swiftly.
Uzoma Asagwara has asked for a preliminary report and assessment regarding the death be completed within a couple of weeks. The middle-aged man died at Health Sciences Centre on Tuesday morning.
“We will learn from this critical incident what needs to happen, if anything, to prevent this from ever happening again in our emergency rooms,” the minister told reporters Wednesday afternoon.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES
Health minister Uzoma Asagwara
Dr. Shawn Young, the hospital’s chief operating officer, said Tuesday that the man arrived by ambulance shortly after midnight that day. He was assessed, triaged and directed to the waiting room with instructions to let staff members know if his condition changed or worsened. Staff noticed the man’s condition had deteriorated shortly before 8 a.m., and he later died.
The ER was well over capacity when staff noticed the man’s condition had significantly worsened, Young said.
“This incident must serve as a wake-up call to those in charge,” Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson said in a statement before Asagwara’s news conference.
“The leadership at HSC and within the minister of health’s office must work tirelessly to uncover the root causes of this failure and implement immediate and sustainable solutions. Our system is in crisis, and the time for action is long overdue.”
Doctors Manitoba said emergency room wait times have been too long for quite some time.
“The main cause of ER overcrowding and long wait times is insufficient capacity to get patients out of the ER, often a lack of inpatient hospital beds. This means patients back up in the ER blocking treatment spaces, leaving patients in the waiting room,” the organisation said in a statement.
“The best solution for reducing ER waits is adding more hospital capacity, and we are encouraged to see the government opening more inpatient beds and hiring more staff.”
fpcity@freepress.mb.ca