Death of patient while waiting for care at Winnipeg's HSC will be investigated as critical incident

A critical incident report on a situation where a man died last week while waiting for care in Manitoba's largest hospital will be completed within three months.

Officials from the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg said on Thursday an initial investigation into the situation has determined it meets the criteria to be deemed a critical incident. Manitoba law requires reports on those types of incidents be finished within three months, Shared Health said in a statement.

Critical incidents are defined by the province as cases where people have suffered "serious and unintended harm" while receiving health care.

"I think that we have someone that passed away in circumstances that we do have some questions about, which was one of the reasons why it was filed as a potential [critical incident]," Jennifer Cumpsty, the hospital's executive director of acute health services, said during a Zoom call with reporters.

The patient arrived at HSC by ambulance around 11:30 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 27, and was triaged, hospital officials said at a news conference last week.

An hour later, his condition began deteriorating. Staff attempted to revive him, but he was declared dead.

Cumpsty said an independent patient safety team will handle the investigation into the man's death.

"They take a look at circumstances, they take a look at all the facts and then they make recommendations … things that maybe could be improved on to ensure that these type of events don't happen again in the future," she said.

Dr. Shawn Young, the hospital's chief operating officer, said more details about what happened will be released at that point.

"At that time, we will give as much information as we possibly can, keeping in mind there are a lot of patient confidentiality laws" that prevent them from disclosing certain details, he said.

Young would not provide any further details about the man who died. He also would not say how many patients were waiting in the emergency department at the time of the person's death, or how many people were in the hallway where a nurse who spoke to CBC News this week on the condition of anonymity said the man was found.

"We can say that it was a very busy day with a lot of acuity," he said.

Cumpsty said the incident has had a significant impact on people working throughout the hospital, not just those in the emergency department.

"All teams have been under a lot of pressure. There's a lot of capacity challenges," she said.

"People are very much aware of what happened, and nobody ever wants something like this to happen."