Man dies at Winnipeg emergency room while waiting for care

A middle-aged man died in the emergency room at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre (HSC) on Tuesday morning, according to hospital officials.

HSC chief operating officer Dr. Shawn Young would not reveal what medical emergency caused the man’s death, citing patient privacy laws, but did say the man was a low-acuity patient, and was waiting in the ER for a long time.

“Those waits can be quite long,” said Young. “When we look at those patients that wait the longest, those 90th percentiles, they can be up to 10 hours and longer, and this patient would have fit that.”

Young said the patient was brought in by an ambulance shortly after midnight, triaged, and had some assessments done. Around 8 a.m. his conditioned worsened, and he was taken to a resuscitation room. He was pronounced dead soon after.

The patient’s death will be investigated, which will include a review of his chart, assessments, and any video footage or underlying health conditions.

Young said the emergency room averaged 100 patients over the past 24 hours, including a number of high-acuity patients. He added the hospital was struggling to move patients out of the hospital, resulting in backups.

“We had a number of admitted patients in the department, and we weren’t able to get them into beds in the facility because the patients within HSC we needed to get out — we have not been able to successfully get them back out to their communities or their residences in a timely manner.”

Michael Herman, an Ottawa doctor and member of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, said this is often an issue that results in long wait times in ERs.

“The real driver is in the inability of emergency patients to be flown through the department and be dispositioned into the hospital, or wherever else they need to be,” said Herman.

Young said he did not believe staffing levels in the emergency room were a factor in the patient’s death, and the hospital had initiated multiple surge protocols over the past 24 hours to improve patient flow. He added wait times have been slowly improving.

“They’re not where we want them to be — it’s going to be a long time before we get them to where we want them to be — but they have been improving over the last year,” said Young.

In February 2023, a patient died waiting in a hallway at HSC after being triaged. A review found there was a surge of critically ill patients in the emergency department at the time of his death.

In November 2023 a patient died at the Grace Hospital emergency department after waiting 33 hours for a bed.

On Jan. 19, 2024, a patient died at the St. Boniface Hospital ER. The patient died after waiting five hours, and having undergone diagnostic testing.

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