Tories promise to tackle long wait times in Manitoba hospitals

Manitoba Progressive Conservative Leader Brian Pallisterrepeated more of the same party platform points todayhe has in recent months about plans to reduceManitoba's long wait times and high ambulance fees.

Pallisterstepped to the podiumMonday morning outside the Grace Hospital on Portage Avenue. Hesaid"Hello" to the crowd and then stareddown at his wrist watch, taking a long, curious, pregnant pause.

"That was 10 seconds," Pallister said. "Seemed a lot longer, didn't it? How'd you like to wait for six hours on average? Because that's the average wait time here, and that has to change."

Pallister echoed past statements about the Selinger-led government, saying Manitobans have lost trust in the NDP and want a change. He said the current government has repeatedly let Manitobans down in emergency rooms across the province.

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"Imagine waiting with someone who you love, who you care for deeply, who is in pain, who is frightenedand imagine doing that for six hours," Pallister said. "Manitobans are not getting results when it comes to health care, they're not getting access."

Manitobans pay the most for ambulances and wait longer than any other province for emergency care and surgical procedures, he said.

RAW: Tories promise to tackle long wait times in Manitoba hospitals

9 years ago

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Progressive Conservative Leader Brian Pallister repeated some more of the same platform points he has in recent months about Manitoba's long wait times and high ambulance fees Monday in Winnipeg.

According to numbers released bythe Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) in December, Concordia Hospital posted the longest emergency roomwait times across the nation in 2014-15, with about 10 per centof patients waiting more than seven hours before being assessed by a physician. The national average for the same period was 3.1 hours.

Out of the nearly 200 hospitals for which data were gathered, all of Winnipeg's six hospitals were ranked in the top 12 for longest wait times based on the 90th percentile.

• Winnipeg ER wait times worst in country again, report says

If elected, Pallister says the PCs would form a task force at an estimatedcost of $700,000. It would spend six months focusing on shortening wait times and speeding up access to health care across the board.

Pallisteralsopromised to invest more in frontlinehealth care services andanalyze which demographics are using emergency services in Manitoba.

"So many people are giving up in frustration in our emergency rooms," Pallister said. "The NDP's approach is to make promises, and they're good at that. They make a lot of them.... Our focus is on keeping promises."

'No meat on the bones'

Selinger responded, calling the PC's plan "vague" with "no meat on the bones."

The NDP's first campaign announcement was a commitment to double the amount of quick care clinics in Manitoba, he said. Selingeradded the Manitoba government has also upped the amount of doctors and nurses under his watch and dramaticallyreduced so-called "hallway medicine."

In September, CIHI released a report charting anation-high rate of doctors who leftthe province in search of work elsewhere in 2014. Two left the country while 47 physicians went looking for jobs in other provinces the highest in the country that year.

• More doctors left Manitoba in 2014 than any other province: CIHI report

Manitoba was also one of the provinces with the highest number of international medical school graduates in the country, somethingCIHIsenior analyst Walter Feeny saidcould explain the province's exodus rates.

The province disputed the report's numbers, instead pointing to figures from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba that show there was a net increase of 83 doctors in the province in 2014.

CIHIsaidits report excluded resident doctors still in medical training and semi-retired physicians, among others, which explains the discrepancy.

Selingeralso touted the fact that Manitoba has fewer patients returning to emergency rooms for follow-up treatment than other provinces.

"The thing we have to remember when it comes to ER wait timesis we have the lowest number of people returning,"Selinger said. "Other systems churn people in and out but they return."

According to CIHI, 8.6 per cent of patients in Manitoba and Nova Scotia had to be readmitted at some point in 2014.

The provinces tied for second place in the country and were behind only Quebec (8.4 per cent) and Newfoundland and Labrador (8.4 per cent). The provinces with the lowest and highest readmission rateswere separated byanarrow margin ofjust 1.5per cent, with Nunavutcoming in last place.

On Sunday afternoon, the NDP released a statement saying aPallister-led governmentwould focus on introducing austerity measures that would endanger essential health-careservices Manitobansrely on.

"The last time Brian Pallister and the Conservatives were in power, they fired teachers and nurses, privatized MTS, closed overnight service at four community hospitals and shut down the Misericordia ER," Selinger said in a statement. "They've done it before and they'll do it again."