Some patients at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre wait 10 hours or more for a bed

Some people at Winnipeg's busiest hospital are waiting as long as 10 hours for a bed, someeven longer, according to recent data.

The latest monthly hospital wait time reporting data from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority shows that approximately one in 10 ER patients at the Health Sciences Centre were waiting up to 10 hours or longer for a bed in February.

That statistic is based on the 90th percentile for wait times at Winnipeg hospitals, which shows what the longest wait times are for some patients.

It's the longest it's been in years.

When looking at median wait times at HSC, half of the patients were waiting up to 2.4 hours, while the other half were waiting longer.

Asked about the statistics during question period Monday, Health Minister Audrey Gordon said the pandemic has been tough on the province's health-care system, and that ERs are seeing high volumes of patients.

"I want to assure Manitobans that our sickest patients that show up in our emergency departments, that we are providing quality, safe care," she said.

"We know that for less urgent patients, the levels are higher than we would like them to be. But we continue to work with our health system leadership in order to identify opportunities to increase medicine capacity."

But the Manitoba NDP's health critic said the government's explanation sounds more like an excuse, and that the wait times are the result of cuts to health care.

"This government knows that the wait times we're seeing at emergency rooms today are a direct result of their decision-making leading up to this pandemic," said Uzoma Asagwara.

"And they continued to make those bad decisions throughout this pandemic. So, you know, the government would, I think, instill confidence in Manitobans if they would actually be accountable to the mistakes that they made. And they refuse to do that."

Meanwhile, when looking at all Winnipeg hospitals, 1 in 10 patients were waiting as long as seven hours for care in February.