More than 25% of patients left Health Sciences Centre's ER without being seen in July: data
CBC
More than one in every four patients who showed up in need of medical care at the emergency department of Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre in July ended up leaving without seeing a doctor.
The jump in the number of patients leaving without getting care, indicated in numbers from Shared Health, comes as median wait times at city emergency departments and urgent care centres have shot up to their highest levels in years.
Hospitals across Winnipeg all saw similar jumps in the proportion of patients who gave up on waiting in the summer months, according to data from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority.
The biggest spike happened from June to July, when the number of people who left before being treated more than doubled from 1,572 (7.9 per cent of all patients) to 3,265 (15 per cent).
That increase was experienced to some level at all the sites reflected in data from the last six months: emergency departments at Grace Hospital, St. Boniface Hospital and Health Sciences Centre (HSC), and urgent care centres at Concordia Hospital, Seven Oaks General Hospital and Victoria General Hospital.
But some fared much worse than others.
That includes HSC, where in July, 28 per cent of all the patients who arrived for emergency care ended up going home without getting medical attention.