Winnipeggers react to worst hospital wait times in country

Winnipeggers are reacting to areport released Thursday that revealed the city's hospital emergency roomshavesome of the longest wait times in Canada.

• Winnipeg's Grace Hospital has worst ER wait times in Canada: study

According to the report, released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, four of the five slowest ERs in Canada are in Winnipeg.

St. Boniface General Hospital, Victoria General Hospital, Concordia Hospital were among the bottomfour.

The Grace Hospital located just off Portage Avenuetopped the list with the longest recorded ER wait at 9.1 hours. This placed the Grace in the90th percentile, that is, the maximum amount of time nine outof 10 patients waited to see a doctor.

Experts have said the maximum wait time should be three hours.

Tara Torchia-Wells said her mother was insidethe Grace Hospital's emergency room with abnormal pain.

They arrived the night before.

We probably got there around 9:30 in the eve and checked into triage quickly," said Torchia-Wells.

She saidher mom waited 6.5hours to see a doctor. Then they heard Torchia-Wells' motherwas in store for another long wait: it would be12 more hours to get any tests done.

"He basically said they can't do anything for her at this point, they'd have to wait 'till morning to do a diagnostic test, which was an ultrasound," said Torchia-Wells.It will stick in my mind for a long time as not being reasonable and not being acceptable."

Manitoba Health Minister Erin Selby agreed.

Selby said she's told hospital officials to pull up their socks.

"The message was loud and clear in these numbers that we can do better.We should be doing better and Manitobans deserve to have better. I have told the WRHA (Winnipeg Regional Health Authority) that I expect them to meet their target.It's an ambitious target but I think they should meet it."

The WRHA said addressing wait times inthe Grace Hospital ER is a top priority.

The WHRA said it isin the process of changing when diagnostictesting will be available in hopes that will help shorten average wait times.