View From the Legislature

Last week new data was released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) regarding Emergency Room wait times in Winnipeg. CIHI is the national independent organization that reports on a variety of healthcare related data annually.

The CIHI report showed Manitoba’s plan to reduce wait times in emergency rooms is working. Wait times across Canada are trending longer across the nation except in Manitoba, where we saw a 42-minute year-over-year improvement in 2017-2018 in the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority for emergency room wait times. There was also significant improvement in the length of stay for admitted emergency room patients in the WRHA, which is now better than the Canadian average and improved 25.1% in 2017-2018.

Our government’s plan to improve wait times has resulted in the lowest wait times in the past eight years, and we will continue working to improve wait times for Manitobans. CIHI recognized Manitoba as a top performer in a number of other health-related categories, providing further evidence that our plan is working. The wait time numbers have continued to improve even beyond CIHI’s reporting period, and this year has seen further improvements.

As the former Minister of Health for Manitoba I appreciate the hard work that has gone into these results by front line workers and all of our healthcare professionals. I hope to see even greater improvements as our government continues to implement our plan.