Manitoba to add 31 acute-care beds to Winnipeg's Grace Hospital to help ease ER in crisis

The province says it's beefing up the number of acute-care beds at Winnipeg's Grace Hospital to ease wait times for patients in its embattled emergency room.

The hospital will also get 10 new medicine beds and 11 new surgical beds by April 2024, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara announced during a Thursday news conference at the hospital. Five of the new surgical beds were previously announced on Nov. 17.

The Grace will have 10 additional medicine beds by April 2025.

Thursday's announcement comes following the death of a patient who waited 33 hours for treatment at Grace's emergency room on Saturday. Last month, the family of a Winnipeg senior said she spent more than a week waiting for care on a stretcher in the hospital's emergency room.

"The Grace Hospital has had a lot of attention in recent months, but not the kind of attention that anyone wants necessarily, and not the attention that anyone who works here deserves," Asagwara said.

"We are working on very creative solutions that are specific to Manitoba, and our team has already taken steps to retain, which is really the most important step that we have to take."

The hospital currently has 239 beds, the province told CBC News on Thursday, including 111 surgical, 106 medicine, 10 intensive care and 12 hospice.

It says the extra beds will help increase patient capacity at Grace's medicine and surgical units, enhancing patient flow and reducing wait times.

The expansion will require 75 additional staff, including nurses, health-care aides, clerks, allied health professionals and non-clinical support staff to help with things including housekeeping and health records, according to the province.

However, PC health critic Kathleen Cook says the province's promise for new beds at the Grace on Thursday is part of a recent series of "ad-hoc" health-care announcements from the government. She wonders how the province will be able to staff the new beds.

"Without staff, a bed is just a bed," Cook told reporters outside the legislative chamber Thursday. "I do have questions about the NDP's ability to get these beds online without a corresponding staffing plan that addresses recruitment, training and retention."

Asagwara says the new beds for the Grace are part of the province's sustainable strategy to tackle challenges across Manitoba's entire health-care system, adding that a phased-in approach will allow time to find health care workers to fill the shifts.

"We didn't get here overnight, and we won't get to where we need to go overnight, either. The work to begin fixing health care starts with the staff, it starts with the retention of existing staff."

In late October, statistics from the local health authority suggested that wait times at Winnipeg emergency rooms and urgent care centres are the worst in close to a decade.

The province has been listening to frontline experts and analysing data to determine the hospitals in Manitoba that need more beds, according to Asagwara. Similar announcements for other hospitals will be announced in the coming days and weeks.

Asagwara also says that a new family medicine program will be established at the Grace, which will allow family medicine residents to spend their two years of training after graduation at the hospital.

"The Grace is the only emergency department hospital that doesn't have a family medicine program, so the addition of these 31 beds is significant. The implementation of this particular unit is critical to them being able to have the capacity they need," Asagwara said.

Province answering hospital's 'cry for help'

Dr. Ramin Hamedani, chief medical officer of the Grace Hospital, says it has been a challenging time for the hospital and Manitoba's entire health-care system.

"It will have a tremendous impact on [patient flow], and ultimately, for the care that we provide to our patients here at the Grace," he said at the news conference. "It will also [have an] important, positive impact on the system as a whole."

Hamedani thanked the province for answering the hospital's "cry for help."

The Grace has been struggling, Asagwara said, which has been taking a toll on its staff.

"We do need to do better," Asagwara said. "I want folks to know that we can do better, and that we will do better, and we're going to do that by working together."