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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNurses at Steinbach\u2019s Bethesda Regional Health Centre signed an open letter calling for additional staff. ERs in communities such as Selkirk and Stonewall are also seeing an influx of patients from Winnipeg. (Graham Walker \/ The Carillon)\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re all trying to access health care, right? And everybody deserves health care. And I feel bad, because people have to come out here thinking that the wait times are less,\u201d the nurse said. \u201cI can\u2019t blame people for wanting to seek care, and they\u2019re desperate to see someone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Long waits to see a family doctor and lengthy estimated wait times at Winnipeg facilities push patients to travel farther to seek immediate care, the nurse said. Much of the time, there is only one doctor working in the Selkirk ER.<\/p>\n
The nurse said hospital administrators have tried to address the problem by scheduling more nurses, hiring physician assistants and deferring low-acuity patients to nearby clinics, but the problem persists.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven with all that in place, it\u2019s still getting bad,\u201d the nurse said. \u201cThen we can\u2019t get to the patients in a timely fashion and deal with their issues and take care of them properly, which could result in (a critical) incident.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the NDP was elected to government in 2023, one of its promises was to address wait times in hospitals by recruiting and retaining more staff. The party has touted the hiring of thousands of health-care workers and increasing the number of hospital beds across the province.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t blame people for wanting to seek care, and they\u2019re desperate to see someone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wait times in Winnipeg emergency departments ranged from 7.75 hours to 13.75 hours Thursday afternoon. The Interlake-Eastern health authority \u2014 which oversees the Selkirk facility \u2014 does not display emergency room wait times on its website.<\/p>\n
Stacey Ross, 55, died on Jan. 16 after her family said she waited 11 hours in the emergency room at St. Boniface Hospital. The fatality is subject to a provincial critical incident review, which is a process that probes fatalities and serious injuries in the health-care system.<\/p>\n
The Manitoba Nurses Union said earlier this week that people from outside the local area were crowding Steinbach\u2019s Bethesda Regional Health Centre.<\/p>\n
Nurses there signed an open letter to the regional health authority and provincial leaders in which they called for a second triage nurse to be placed in the emergency department.<\/p>\n
The letter, signed by 40 nurses at the hospital, said it\u2019s common for ER patients to wait more than an hour before being seen by a triage nurse, and eight hours before being reassessed. One nurse can be responsible for 30 patients at any given time, the letter states.<\/p>\n
Union president Darlene Jackson said facilities in Selkirk, Stonewall and other small communities are feeling the pressure as a result of urban residents seeking health care in rural centres.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey simply aren\u2019t staffed to handle an influx of patients from Winnipeg.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWait times in Winnipeg are really driving people out to these other facilities in hopes to have wait times that are less lengthy. So what we\u2019re seeing is that a lot of these facilities are getting busier and busier,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n
Jason Linklater, president of the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals, said health care should be operated in an integrated system, but instead the province, Shared Health and the regional health authorities try to address problems in isolation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose problems then spill over into other areas, which is exactly what seems to be happening in rural emergency departments,\u201d Linklater said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of those hospitals were short-staffed to begin with, including a shortage of laboratory and imaging technologists that are essential for emergency care. They simply aren\u2019t staffed to handle an influx of patients from Winnipeg.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n
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Provincial physicians\u2019 advocacy organization Doctors Manitoba said it is not surprised to hear some Winnipeg patients seek ER care in nearby rural communities to avoid long wait times in the city, however, patients should know rural ERs can, and do, experience lengthy waits.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have raised physicians\u2019 deep concerns for several years about long ER and urgent-care wait times, which is generally caused by gaps in physician coverage or patients backing up in the ER waiting for in-patient hospital care,\u201d the organization said in a statement.<\/p>\n
For their part, regional health authorities said they haven\u2019t noticed a problem.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson from the Interlake-Eastern authority said in an email there has been no increase in the number of people travelling from Winnipeg for emergency care, and Manitobans have travelled both to and from larger centres for emergency care for many years.<\/p>\n
Ensuring that patients, regardless of where they come from, receive timely and appropriate care is a provincially co-ordinated effort, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Data provided by a Southern Health spokesperson shows in 2024, 5.5 per cent of ER patients at the Steinbach hospital were from Winnipeg, but it has declined to 3.3 per cent so far this year.<\/p>\n
nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca<\/p>\n
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Nicole Buffie Nicole Buffie is a reporter for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College\u2019s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom as a multimedia producer in 2023. Read more about Nicole<\/a>.<\/p>\n Every piece of reporting Nicole produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print \u2014 part of the Free Press\u2018s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press\u2019s history and mandate<\/a>, and learn how our newsroom operates<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Multimedia producer
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