Moving hospital patients to hallways, staff lounges will be short-lived: Manitoba health minister

The relocation of some Winnipeg hospital patients into hallways and staff lounges is only temporary, the province's health minister insists.

Audrey Gordon said the decision to treat patients in "non-traditional locations" is due to a short-term spike in patient admissions at various urgent-care centres. 

"I'm assured from Shared Health that no one is being placed in closets and some of the other places that I've heard lately," Gordon said.

"These are areas that are staffed. They have the proper health equipment. They're being monitored. And these are individuals that are close to being discharged within 24 to 48 hours," she added. 

"It's a temporary measure, and we're going to continue to ensure that regardless of where Manitobans go to receive care that they're safe and their health is paramount."

In an internal memo obtained last week by CBC News, Ken Cavers, the chief medical officer at Victoria General Hospital, stressed no one would claim the transfer of patients into alternative areas of the hospital is ideal.

Patient numbers overwhelm hospitals

He said it became necessary as a result of a "bed crisis." Hospitals were admitting too many patients and, as such, some individuals were transferred from emergency departments to lower acuity hospitals. Such transfers put added pressures on facilities such as the Victoria hospital, which had to find new areas for beds.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority stressed that only patients who are about to be discharged will be moved to these "non-traditional locations."

NDP Leader Wab Kinew sees the move as a reintroduction of hallway medicine.

"Not just that patients are being sent into hallways on hospital beds, but you actually see it in writing that this is something that the health-care system, because of the choices that the PCs have made over the years, is being forced to do as just a standard operating procedure," Kinew said.

"Certainly, we can do a lot better than this. It involves staffing and it involves a long-term commitment to improving and making the right investments for health care."

Last month, the WRHA and Shared Health reported the overall median wait time at all sites increased in March. It attributed the worrying statistics to numerous factors, ranging from the high infectiousness of COVID-19 bumping up the number of staff sick calls to high patient volumes and severe weather.

One measure it has taken to reduce the number of patients and slash wait times was to shift appropriate lower acuity patient arrivals to urgent care centres rather than Winnipeg's three emergency departments. The health organizations said the change, once fully introduced, would redirect dozens of patients per day away from Winnipeg's biggest hospitals.