Manitoba adding 50 beds to Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg, plus more pediatric ICU beds

Another 50 beds are opening at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre to help reduce wait times, and four more pediatric intensive care unit beds will also be funded, the provincial government said at a news conference Monday.

There will be 35 medicine beds, 10 psychiatric beds and five surgical beds added to Manitoba's biggest hospital, the provincial government said in a news release — and 27 medicine beds and nine psychiatric beds are already open, officials said at a news conference held at HSC.

In addition, the nine-bed pediatric ICU is getting increased funding so that it can have four more permanent beds and an additional four pediatric beds at the level below intensive care, Dr. Shawn Young, chief operating officer for HSC, said at the news conference.

"We've not been at nine kids in our ICU for probably two years now. It's been well over 100 per cent capacity," he said.

It was a surprise addition to the announcement of the 50 beds, one Premier Wab Kinew said they'd planned to announce separately.

"Surprise," Kinew said.

The 50 new beds that were initially announced will improve patient flow, reducing strain on emergency rooms, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said.

"HSC has the busiest emergency department in the province. It is our busiest hospital," Asagwara said at the news conference. "It will benefit our entire health-care system."

The 50 beds are among 151 new acute care beds at Manitoba hospitals funded in the provincial budget released April 2, the province said, including 31 new beds at Grace Hospital and 36 at St. Boniface Hospital that were announced in November and January, respectively.

The new HSC beds will open over the next year, the news release said, but about half are already open, medical staff said Monday.

The new beds are part of the $65 million allocated in the provincial budget to reduce wait times in emergency departments, Asagwara said.

Staff also needed

A big part of opening new beds is making sure there's staff to care for the patients, both Kinew and Asagwara said.

Retaining the staff already in the system has to be first and foremost in efforts to increase the numbers of health-care professionals, Kinew said, but they're also working on finding more staff.

"We're encouraging new grads to stay in the province. Some would say beg," he said.

Helping health-care professionals feel they can do their jobs well is also a big part of it, and strengthening the system is a step in that goal.

"Our goals are ambitious. We would like Health Sciences Centre to be a beacon not just in the province, but across the country five to 10 years from now. I want civil servants in other provinces to be sent here to ask, 'How did they do it in Manitoba?'" Kinew said.

But today's announcement was just an incremental step toward that goal, he said.

"We're announcing a few dozen new beds which have come online towards the goal of 35 [medicine beds]. We probably need 60 at HSC," he said.

"We're not here talking about mission accomplished. We're here talking about first steps and next steps."

Dr. Manon Pelletier, HSC's chief medical officer and a hospitalist, said on her way to the news conference, she voiced her opinion that staff have recently felt more heard and happier.

"There's a light at the end of this tunnel, and things have already gotten better, so there's a lot of hope in this building, I would say. I feel it and I think our staff do, too."