Patient dies while waiting for care in ER at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre
Condition of middle-aged man deteriorated significantly as his wait entered the 8th hour: health official
A patient died while waiting eight hours for care at Health Sciences Centre's emergency department in Winnipeg Tuesday morning.
Dr. Shawn Young, chief operating officer of the Health Sciences Centre, said at a news conference a middle-aged man was brought to the emergency room by ambulance shortly after midnight.
Just before 8 a.m., staff noticed his condition had significantly worsened. He was taken to a resuscitation room and declared dead shortly after.
Young said the patient was initially triaged and there were at least some reassessments, but the hospital will be reviewing those protocols as part of its investigation.
The man was a low-acuity patient, and was on track to wait 10 hours or longer before being seen — a wait that occurs for around one out of 10 patients at HSC, Young said. About 100 patients were in the emergency department through the night.
'We did have a number of high-acuity patients at that time," he said, adding the hospital's six resuscitation beds were occupied that night.
"When we see cold weather like this, we do have a number of patients that come in seeking shelter and safety as well, and that was a factor … in the waiting room as well."
Young said the hospital has started an investigation that involves interviewing staff, assessing protocols and reviewing security footage. He expects the process to take a few days.
Whole system 'backed up': COO
In November, the last month for which data is publicly available, HSC reported a median wait of 3.8 hours at its emergency department. Ten per cent of patients waited more than 13 hours for care.
As of 10 a.m. Tuesday, the posted wait time at HSC's emergency department was 8.25 hours, according to data from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.
Shared Health said there were about 50 patients in the waiting room as of Tuesday morning.
Young said while the emergency department was "well over capacity" early Tuesday, the volume of patients wasn't abnormal. Meanwhile, staffing was close to a baseline level of between 24 and 25 nurses, with about 21 working at the time, so the number of workers wasn't a factor in the death, he said.
"We were really struggling with throughput out of the hospital over the last 24 hours," he said.
"We were not able to get [patients] into beds in the facility because the patients within HSC that we need to get out, we've not been able to successfully get them back out to their communities or their residence in a timely manner.
"So the whole health system was a bit backed up."
Dr. Manon Pelletier, HSC's chief medical officer, said the employees working that morning are taking the patient's death hard.
"These types of events are incredibly upsetting to our staff, devastating," she said.
"They're all struggling with the events that happened today."
Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara offered their condolences in a statement, and said they're in discussions with health-care leaders in order to prevent similar deaths in the future.
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