Family identifies man who died following hours-long wait in Winnipeg ER

A man who died while waiting for care in the emergency department at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre this week is being remembered by his family as an "absolutely brilliant" kid who in his adult years struggled to overcome battles with mental illness, addictions and homelessness.

Chad Christopher Giffin, 49, died after waiting about eight hours to be seen at Manitoba's largest hospital on Tuesday. His sister, Ronalee Reynolds, said she was contacted by the hospital on Friday morning confirming her brother was the man who died in the ER.

"He was absolutely brilliant. He was the smartest person I knew," Reynolds told CBC News over the phone Friday. "When he was 12 years old, he was writing computer programs. He won a science fair in junior high for building, from scratch, a motion-sensor alarm system. 

"And things have happened in his life that has turned him to having this severe mental health disorder and his way of coping, I suppose, was not recommended the way a doctor would recommend. And I think because of that … if he wasn't homeless, he was very, very close to it."

Officials previously identified Giffin only as a middle-aged man, and said his death would be investigated as a critical incident — defined by the province as a case where a patient suffers "serious and unintended harm" while receiving health care. Critical incident reviews involve a report with recommendations on how the system can improve to avoid similar incidents.

On Tuesday, Health Sciences Centre chief operating officer Dr. Shawn Young said the man now identified as Giffin was brought to the emergency room by ambulance shortly after midnight and was triaged as a low-acuity, or non-urgent, patient.

He was declared dead in a resuscitation room just before 8 a.m., after staff noticed his condition had worsened.

Young said the emergency room was well over capacity in the night leading up to the man's death, but staffing was close to a baseline level.

In November, the last month for which data is publicly available, HSC reported 10 per cent of patients waited more than 13 hours for care at its emergency department. The median wait time was 3.8 hours.

Reynolds said her brother had estranged himself from their family for close to a decade. The last time she was aware of exactly where he was staying was in 2018, when she was notified he'd been reported missing after walking away from the Selkirk Mental Health Centre, where she said he'd been taken several times.

During a sentencing hearing in 2020 following a run-in with the law, court heard Giffin at that time was homeless and often slept in shelters when they were available.

Giffin's sister said she hopes the investigation into her brother's death will help answer the questions her family still has — from why he was brought to hospital by ambulance but assessed as low acuity, to what caused his death.

"Was it something that could have been prevented?" she said. "I think as soon as they know any of that information, we have a right to know."

Reynolds said she also wants to know how often hospital staff checked on her brother before they realized his condition had worsened so much.