From Winnipegsun.com
Winnipeg hospitals remain at the bottom of the pack for wait times, a new report shows.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information’s 2015-16 report once again puts Winnipeg hospitals among the worst in the country for waiting for care, with Concordia Hospital ranking the worst of them all with 90% of patients waiting 6.8 hours to get into an emergency room.
Across the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, the 90th percentile wait time was 5.5 hours, compared to the national mark of 3.1 hours.
WRHA president Lori Lamont said the figures released Wednesday were not unexpected, but acknowledged they did not trend sharply enough in the right direction.
Lamont said the WRHA saw improvements in the last six months and is confident the province will claw back towards the national average.
“That is certainly our goal, to continue to incrementally move to the Canadian mean,” Lamont said. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be at or close to the average of our peers across the country.
“... It is certainly our goal and I believe that we will achieve the national average on the wait times measure. I don’t believe that that’s going to happen overnight, but I am very pleased with the progress we’ve made in the last six months, and I believe that we can sustain that improvement and build on it.”
Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen said the expected wait-times task force should be in place by the end of the year and provide more answers and direction towards addressing the issue.
“We want to see measured improvement each and every year. That is what Manitobans would expect to see,” he said. “It’s difficult for me to say that everything is going to be great overnight, or that everything is going to be completely fixed within a few months, but I think the measurement is are we making steps to improving each and every year.”
Agnita Pal, a manager of CIHI’s clinical administrative databases operations, said those looking for bright sides in the latest report may have some evidence on which to hang their hat.
“We certainly saw improvement in this year’s results, compared to last year,” she said.
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