Nurses union says health-care system at a crisis point, as Winnipeg hospital ranks as worst performing in Canada

Manitoba’s nurses union has released its ideas to help the government solve the health-care crisis. Taylor Brock explains.

A scathing new report from the union representing Manitoba nurses asserts there has been no measurable improvement in some factions of the health-care system while conditions have worsened in others.

The findings were released in the Manitoba Nurses Union’s (MNU) “White Paper” report.

It summarizes key metrics the union tracks throughout the year, as well as data obtained from other agencies and through the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA).

MNU President Darlene Jackson said at a news conference Thursday there is no doubt the health-care system is in crisis.

“It confirms what nurses have been saying all along – we are understaffed, overworked and drowning in a system that is failing both frontline workers and the patients we care for,” Jackson said.

The report draws on data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), which found Manitoba hospitals performed significantly worse than their national counterparts in terms of its Hospital Standardized Mortality Rate (HSMR) – which considers mortality rates within a facility and adjusts for certain factors, including patient age, diagnosis, and length of stay.

Perhaps most troubling, CIHI’s statistics found Health Sciences Centre (HSC), which is Manitoba’s largest hospital, had the worst HSMR score in the entire country.

As well, the data for 2023/2024 has three other Manitoba hospitals listed in the top eight – Grace Hospital at third, St. Boniface Hospital at sixth and Brandon General Hospital at eighth.

“These statistics point to deep systemic issues that are compromising patient care and safety across Manitoba’s public health-care system,” the White Paper report said.

Shared Health told CTV News Winnipeg in a statement the HSMR is not an accurate reflection of the highly skilled, patient-centered care at HSC.

It noted HSC serves as the major referral centre for rural, northern and remote locations.

“Those factors, combined with a population that has high rates of chronic disease, multiple co-morbidities and poor social determinants of health, make the interpretation of this data set challenging. Its validity has been called into question in the past for these reasons,” the statement said.

Some of the other key takeaways – the time it took for patients to see a doctor or nurse practitioner in Winnipeg’s emergency departments and urgent care facilities nearly tripled over the past five years – an increase of 2.65 times.

The increasing rate of patients who were left without being seen was in direct proportion to emergency department and urgent care wait times, the report said.

According to information MNU accessed under FIPPA, this rate increased 5.4 per cent in Winnipeg between 2020 and 2021, which amounts to about one in 20 patients. It asserted that number rose to 15.3 per cent or just over one in seven patients, from 2023 to 2024.

This as patient volumes remained relatively stable, aside from a temporary decline at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report said in spite of this, wait times and the proportion of patients leaving without care continued to rise.

Meanwhile, the report said nursing vacancies have steadily increased across all health regions.

Aggregate data from similar time periods over the last four years found a 15.9 per cent provincial nursing vacancy rate in the summer of 2020 compared to a 21 per cent vacancy rate in the summer of 2024.

“Each vacancy report MNU receives from health regions provides only a snapshot in time, and vacancy rates can fluctuate. However, by aggregating data from similar time periods over the past four years, MNU has identified a clear and concerning trend,” the report said.

Additionally, overtime hours logged by nurses jumped from 800,000 in 2020/21 to 1,150,000 in 2023/24.

The union concluded Manitoba’s public health-care system is in a crisis amid severe nurse staffing shortages and extreme or unsafe working conditions.

“Conditions have not improved and in many areas, they have worsened,” the report said.

To address these findings, the union made a number of recommendations, including investing in systems that allow nurses to access available work, like centralized scheduling systems, retaining and incentivizing senior nurses, making effective use of nurse practitioners, and increasing transparency of key performance metrics.

“The government keeps telling Manitobans that help is here, but that’s not what the data shows,” Jackson said.

Improving Manitoba’s health-care system was at the forefront of the NDP’s election campaign in 2023. Prior to being elected, Premier Wab Kinew promised $500 million over four years to hire 1,000 more nurses, physicians and other health-care personnel.

In September, the province said it was on track to hit its goal.

The NDP said from April to August in 2024, it hired 873 net new health-care personnel to work within the public system, including health-care aides, nurses, physicians, and midwives.

Doctors Manitoba reported improvements in physician shortages in the province last year, with data showing the largest-ever net gain of 133 physicians.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara told reporters Thursday the changes the province is making to the health-care system are going to take time to show gains, and they know there are still challenges.

“We are here to listen. I am very, very open and willing to hear any criticism and feedback from the front lines because that’s where the solutions are.”

- With files from CTV’s Devon McKendrick