When the NDP government announced last week it plans to open 68 transitional care beds, it showed the province is on the right track to reduce hospital congestion and emergency-room wait times.
But it’s going to take a lot more than 68 new beds to have a significant impact on hospital overcrowding.
Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara made the announcement last Friday. The expansion includes 15 transitional care beds in Selkirk, eight at Misericordia Health Centre, 25 at Holy Family Personal Care Home and 20 with St. Boniface Street Links 24-7 safe space program for patients discharged from hospital without housing in place.
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Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara announced last week Manitoba plans to set up 68 additional transitional care beds. That will help, but it will only make a small dent in hospital congestion, Tom Brodbeck writes.
One of the reasons hospitals are overcrowded is there are patients who could be discharged but have nowhere to go while they wait for a bed in a longer-term facility. So they sit in hospital taking up valuable space on medical wards. That slows patient flow through the system, which ER doctors call “access block.”
When that happens, patients sick enough to be admitted to hospital pile up in ER hallways. Access block is the main driver of long ER wait times.
Wait times at Winnipeg emergency departments and urgent-care centres have grown significantly over the past year, including since the NDP government took office last October. Over the past year, median ER and urgent-care wait times have jumped from 2.87 hours to 3.6 hours. The longest wait for nine of 10 patients (called the 90th percentile) was 9.83 hours in June, up from 7.37 hours for the same month in 2023.
One of the reasons for that is the amount of time admitted patients are forced to wait in emergency departments before they get a medical bed. That wait is called “length of stay” and has grown over the years. A new report expected soon from the Canadian Institute for Health Information will show Manitoba has among the longest lengths of stay in the country.
So what to do about it? Government has to expand hospital capacity and improve patient flow through health facilities. One of the ways to do that is to expand transitional beds to free up space on medical wards, which is what last week’s announcement was all about.
According to Asagwara, about half of the 68 beds announced are already open and the rest are expected to be staffed by the end of the year. That will help, but it will only make a small dent in hospital congestion.
Nevertheless, it shows the NDP government is starting to tune into what really needs to occur in hospitals to reduce ER wait times and alleviate overcrowding. Too often the Kinew government has peddled the false notion that opening or expanding minor-injury clinics reduces ER wait times. All of the studies have shown that reducing the number of low-acuity patients in emergency departments has little, if any, impact on wait times. That’s something ER physicians reiterate on a regular basis.
One of the reasons ER wait times have grown is the previous Progressive Conservative government cut hospital beds in Winnipeg. From 2018-19 to 2022-23, the number of hospital beds in Winnipeg fell from 2,292 to 2,244, according to the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.
That doesn’t include Health Sciences Centre, which is run separately by Shared Health. Total hospital beds at HSC during the same period grew slightly from 769 to 787. But there was still an overall hospital-bed decline in Winnipeg.
Even with a drop in ER visits during that time, ER wait times grew. So did bed occupancy, which sat at 94.6 per cent, on average, in 2022-23. Most medical analysts say bed occupancy should be closer to 85 per cent to allow room for spikes in patient demand.
It’s no surprise that access block and hospital congestion worsened after government reduced capacity, especially with a growing and aging population.
Also, the percentage of patients that left ERs without being seen, owing to long wait times, also grew significantly from 2018-19 to 2022-23, from 7.7 per cent to 16.7 per cent at HSC, and from 4.93 per cent to 11 per cent at all other Winnipeg hospitals. That means some patients who required care did not get it, at least not right away. Some may have seen their conditions deteriorate.
Adding 68 transitional beds to the system will help free up space in hospitals. But given the overall cut to hospitals beds, a lot more will have to be done to expand capacity at Winnipeg hospitals before Manitobans see a drop in ER wait times.
tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca
Tom Brodbeck
Columnist
Tom Brodbeck is a columnist with the Free Press and has over 30 years experience in print media. He joined the Free Press in 2019. Born and raised in Montreal, Tom graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1993 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and commerce. Read more about Tom.
Tom provides commentary and analysis on political and related issues at the municipal, provincial and federal level. His columns are built on research and coverage of local events. The Free Press’s editing team reviews Tom’s columns before they are posted online or published in print – part of the Free Press’s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
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