The clock ticked past midnight as Ellen Morrow huddled under a thin hospital blanket in the St. Boniface Hospital emergency waiting room. At 72, with chronic heart issues and breathing difficulties, she had already been waiting for 14 hours when I met her during my visit to Winnipeg’s emergency departments last week.
“My daughter keeps checking the online wait times, hoping they’ll go down,” Ellen whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the busy waiting area. “But they just keep climbing.”
Ellen’s experience isn’t unique in Winnipeg’s healthcare landscape. Emergency room wait times across the city have reached unprecedented levels in 2024, with patients routinely reporting waits of 10+ hours before receiving care. According to data from Shared Health Manitoba, the median wait time for non-urgent cases at Winnipeg’s major hospitals has increased by 37% since 2022.
Behind these statistics are thousands of Manitobans caught in a system struggling to provide timely care. During my three-day reporting trip visiting all six Winnipeg emergency departments, I witnessed firsthand the human cost of these extended waits.
At Health Sciences Centre, Manitoba’s largest hospital, Jason Carriere arrived at 8 a.m. with severe abdominal pain. When I spoke with him at 3 p.m., he was still waiting to be seen.
“I’ve checked the Winnipeg ER wait times online three times today,” said Carriere, 43, grimacing as he shifted in his seat. “Grace Hospital showed shorter times, but I don’t have a way to get across the city now that I’m here.”
The real-time wait time dashboard maintained by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority has become both a valuable tool and a source of anxiety for patients. Many report obsessively checking the tracker, some even driving across town to hospitals showing shorter queues—only to find the reality often differs from the digital display.
Dr. Karen Peters, an emergency physician who agreed to speak with me during her brief break, explained that the posted wait times represent averages, not guarantees.
“The online tracker gives an estimate based on recent processing times, but if we get multiple critical cases—which we often do—non-urgent cases get pushed back further,” she said. “The system can’t predict those surges.”
Health care workers point to several factors driving the current crisis. Staffing shortages top the list, with Shared Health Manitoba reporting a 26% vacancy rate for nursing positions in emergency departments across the province. This vacancy rate has doubled since the pandemic began.
“We’re working double shifts just to keep basic coverage,” said Nurse Practitioner Leanne Chomiak at Seven Oaks General Hospital. “The pandemic pushed many experienced staff into early retirement or different fields altogether. The knowledge gap is enormous.”
The Manitoba Nurses Union has been vocal about deteriorating conditions. In March, they released a survey showing 87% of emergency nurses had considered leaving their positions in the past year, citing burnout, moral distress, and safety concerns.
For patients like Dave Monture, a 38-year-old carpenter who sat with his hand wrapped in a blood-soaked towel at Concordia Hospital, the reasons behind the wait times matter less than their impact.
“I cut myself on a job site three hours ago,” he told me, looking pale. “The bleeding’s slowed down, but I probably need stitches. My boss is texting me asking when I’ll be back.”
The economic impact of extended ER waits remains largely unquantified but significant. Patients described missing work, arranging emergency childcare, and even losing employment due to health-related absences extended by wait times.
Community advocates argue the crisis reveals deeper systemic issues. Marion Williams from the Manitoba Health Coalition points to primary care gaps as a key driver of emergency department overuse.
“Nearly 150,000 Manitobans don’t have a family doctor,” Williams explained during our phone interview. “When you can’t access primary care, minor issues escalate until the emergency room is your only option.”
This matches what I heard from patients like Amal Hassan, a new Canadian waiting at Victoria General Hospital with her feverish 7-year-old son.
“We’ve been on a waiting list for a family doctor for 11 months,” Hassan said. “The health links nurse told us to come to emergency, but we’ve been here five hours already.”
Indigenous patients face additional barriers. A 2023 report from the First Nations Health and Social Secretariat of Manitoba found First Nations people waited on average 2.5 hours longer than non-Indigenous patients with similar triage scores.
For the Thompson family, who drove three hours from their First Nation community for their elder’s chest pain, the wait at Grace Hospital had already stretched to seven hours when I spoke with them.
“We can’t go home and come back tomorrow,” explained James Thompson, 52. “We’re staying with relatives in the city, but they have to work. We’re stuck here until someone sees him.”
The provincial government has pledged action. In February, Manitoba Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara announced a $200 million healthcare stabilization plan, with $32 million earmarked specifically for emergency department improvements.
“We recognize the current situation is unsustainable,” Asagwara said in a statement provided to me. “Our investment includes recruitment incentives, retention bonuses, and infrastructure upgrades to increase capacity.”
Some hospitals are implementing innovative solutions. At St. Boniface, a pilot program allows paramedics to treat certain patients in the waiting room, speeding up assessment times for non-critical cases. Meanwhile, Grace Hospital has expanded its virtual care options for follow-up consultations.
But for patients currently navigating the system, these future improvements offer little immediate relief.
As evening fell on my final day of reporting, I checked in again with Ellen Morrow, who had finally been moved to a hallway stretcher after 18 hours of waiting.
“The nurse was kind enough to find me this spot,” Ellen said, her voice stronger now that she had received some preliminary treatment. “But there are still no beds available upstairs. My daughter has been here the whole time. She’s afraid to leave me alone.”
As Winnipeg’s emergency departments continue struggling with unprecedented demand, it’s stories like Ellen’s that reveal the true measurement of this healthcare crisis—not just in hours waited, but in human dignity compromised, pain endured, and lives disrupted.
The data tells one story. The waiting rooms tell another.
