Man dies at Winnipeg emergency room while waiting for care
Global News
The patient was triaged as "low acuity" shortly after midnight. By 8am, his condition had worsened and he was taken to a resuscitation room, but pronounced dead soon after.
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.
