‘Devastating loss’: Investigation underway for death of man in Winnipeg ER

An investigation is underway at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre, after a middle-aged man died in the ER while waiting eight hours for care.

The man came in shortly after midnight and was determined a low-aquity patient, but just before 8 a.m. staff noted his condition significantly worsened, and he was declared deceased shortly after.

“We never want to see an incident like this happen in our healthcare system,” said Uzoma Asagwara, Health, Seniors and Long-Term Care Minister. “It is a devastating loss.”

“We’re doing everything we can now to understand what’s happened,” she added. “And how we prevent it as we move forward.”

Health officials say the emergency department had roughly 100 patients overnight, and about 50 at the time of the incident.

Details on the patients condition and the treatment they were seeking were not provided. The province says they have launched a critical incident investigation.

“We are going to learn as quickly as we can,” said Asagwara. “As much information as possible as to how we prevent something like this from happening again.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, online wait times showed just under seven hours for adults at HSC, over five hours for children, 10.5 hours at St. Boniface, and eight hours for Grace Hospital.

“It is extremely frustrating,” said Susan Gareau, former emergency department patient. “You want to make sure when you go there you’re being looked after.”

“I’ve spent over nine hours in there,” added another former emergency department patient, Alex James. “I got there at like 4 p.m. I left at like 4 a.m.”

“It was rough.”

“That’s not an acceptable number,” said Asagwara. “We need to continue to do the work to see wait times improving.”

“There have been some improvements at HSC,” she added. “We are continuing to work very hard to see much more needed improvement.”

The province says the critical incident investigation is underway, and the findings will be shared when it’s complete.