New data highlights reasons why Manitobans, Canadians have been admitted to hospital

A hospital bed is seen in this undated photo. Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)

Giving birth is the number one reason in both Manitoba and Canada for a hospital stay, according to new data, but the birth rate in the country continues to drop.

The 2023-24 data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) shows there were 344,811 hospitalizations to give birth in Canada, 14,967 of those happening in Manitoba.

Despite giving birth being the number one reason for hospitalizations, the hospital-based birth rate in Canada has been dropping slightly almost every year since 2009/10.

The rate then was 112 newborns per 10,000 people in 2009/10. That has now dropped to 87 per 10,000 in 2023/24.

In Manitoba, the highest number of newborns born in hospital was in 2017/18, with 17,262. Since then, it has gone down every single year.

Manitoba’s number for 2023/24 is the lowest it has been since 2008/09.

“I think we’re just going to have to continue to monitor trends and see if that birth rate continues to steadily decline, or alternatively, if there is a rebound. But, when we compare Canada with other countries, we’re seeing similar trends across the board,” said Tanya Khan, the manager of the hospital data advancement and engagement team at CIHI.

People giving birth resulted in an average hospital stay of 2.1 days countrywide. That was just marginally up in Manitoba at 2.2.

Behind giving birth, Canada’s other top reasons for being admitted to hospital are COPD and bronchitis, and heart failure.

The reasons are different in Manitoba, as osteoarthritis of the knee is ranked second and pneumonia is third.

The positive coming from the report, Khan noted, is that hospitalizations in Canada and Manitoba have stabilized.

“So the hospitalization rate is 6,992 hospitalizations per 100,000 population in Canada, and that’s just over three million acute care inpatient hospitalizations last year, very similar to the previous year.”

The average length of stay stayed the same compared to the previous year in Canada at 7.3 days in the hospital.

The total number of hospitalizations in Manitoba dropped slightly from 107,181 in 2022/23 to 104,781 in 2023/24.

Surgeries needed in hospital

Data also looked at the most common surgeries performed in hospitals. In step with giving birth being the main reason for being in hospital, c-section surgeries are the most common in Canada and Manitoba. Second across the country is knee replacement surgery, followed by hip replacements.

Manitoba has the same top three as the Canadian average.

Khan said the main reason for sharing this data is to help the health system plan what is most important per province and territory.

“We really hope that policy decision-makers with the provinces and territories can monitor this information within their regions to support evidence-based decisions on health service delivery for their populations.”

The collected data is from the Hospital Morbidity Database.