It’s time to fact check claims by Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative party that emergency room wait times have soared under the NDP and that the current government has done nothing to alleviate it.
Both are false statements.
Tory MLA and Opposition Leader Wayne Ewasko issued a news release Wednesday claiming ER wait times “have risen by nearly an hour since the NDP took office.”
JOHN WOODS / FREE PRESS FILES
The challenges facing Winnipeg hospitals to bring down long ER wait times is daunting, writes Tom Brodbeck.
That is simply not true. The NDP won last year’s provincial election on Oct. 3 and was sworn into office Oct. 18. In October 2023, the median wait time for emergency departments and urgent care centres in Winnipeg was 3.52 hours, according to monthly data released by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. The longest ER/UC wait time for nine out 10 patients (called the 90th percentile) was 10.8 hours.
ER wait times peaked in December at four hours (about two months after the NDP took office) but have been coming down slowly since.
When the Tories issued their news release Wednesday, the most recent data available showed the median ER wait time in Winnipeg was 3.6 hours in June. The 90th percentile wait was 9.83 for that month.
It’s by no means a massive improvement over the fall/winter figures of 2023-24. The median wait time numbers were largely unchanged from October 2023 and the 90th percentile figures were down slightly.
Wait times were certainly not up by almost an hour as the Tories claim.
On Thursday, the WRHA released more recent numbers showing median ER wait times continued their downward trend in July to 3.42 hours (90th percentile down to 9.12 hours).
So where did the Tories get the “risen by nearly an hour” figure? They compared June 2024 numbers with June 2023 data when they were in power, which show nearly a one-hour jump in median wait times year-over-year. What they failed to mention is that ER wait times, which rose rapidly under the Tory government from 2021 to 2023, continued to soar on their watch right up until last year’s election — from June to October.
To claim the wait times jumped nearly an hour under the NDP is factually incorrect.
So is the Tory claim that the current government has “not brought forward any tangible action to reduce wait times for emergency services.”
Since October 2023, the province has extended hospital discharge services to weekends, which has helped speed up patient flow and freed up medical beds for admitted ER patients. Also, funding for some new hospital beds was announced several months ago while 68 new transitional care beds, half of which are already staffed, are expected to be added to the system by year’s end.
Those are small steps and there’s still no evidence all the announced beds have been staffed. So Manitobans can hardly let the NDP off the hook when it comes to tackling hospital congestion and long ER wait times. The proof will be in the pudding when the new government celebrates its one-year anniversary in office in October, and beyond.
However, to say nothing tangible has been done to reduce ER wait times is simply not true.
The challenges facing Winnipeg hospitals to bring down long ER wait times is daunting. The biggest reason for the longer wait times is that the previous Tory government cut funding to acute care hospitals after they announced their consolidation plan in 2017. Hospitals in turn were forced to reduce the number of staffed beds. That worsened hospital congestion and caused admitted ER patients to wait longer for beds on medical wards.
New data released this week from the Canadian Institute for Health Information shows 90 per cent of admitted ER patients waited 58.9 hours for a hospital bed in 2023-24. That was the third longest in Canada. It was also up markedly from 37.4 hours five years ago.
The longer admitted patients wait in emergency departments for a bed on a medical ward, the less time ER physicians and nurses have to see new patients, which drives up overall wait times.
It will take far more than opening a few dozen new beds to reverse that trend. A comprehensive approach that includes improving patient flow through hospitals will be required — on top of significantly increasing hospital capacity — to bring those numbers down further.
Reducing what hospital physicians call “access block” is complicated. It requires a multi-pronged approach to ensure patients are moving through the system as quickly (and safely) as possible. That includes finding ways to avoid warehousing patients in hospital who should be cared for elsewhere, like in personal care homes or transitional care beds. That’s the task the NDP government has ahead of it.
Has the Kinew government done enough to tackle those issues since taking office? Probably not. But to say it has done nothing, or to claim ER wait times have increased since the NDP took office, is untrue.
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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