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With hospitals crammed, NDP point fingers for patient crunch at dwindling number of ICU beds
As Winnipeg grapples with a swarm of patients cramming hospitals and urgent care centres, the Opposition New Democrats is casting blame on the dwindling number of intensive care beds in use.NDP Leader Wab Kinew slammed the provincial government for gradually cutting the number of intensive care unit beds being used in Winnipeg. (Tyson Koschik/CBC)As Winnipeg grapples with a swarm of patients cramming hospitals and…
As Winnipeg grapples with a swarm of patients cramming hospitals and urgent care centres, the Opposition New Democrats is casting blame on the dwindling number of intensive care beds in use.
As Winnipeg grapples with a swarm of patients cramming hospitals and urgent care centres, the Opposition New Democrats is casting blame on the dwindling number of intensive care beds available.
Using a document obtained through a freedom of information request, NDP leader Wab Kinew shared the number of available ICU beds in Winnipeg has steadily fallen from 73 beds in January 2017 to 63 beds last July.
On Tuesday, the WRHA revealed it only had enough employees to care for patients in 58 of those 63 beds.
“We know that that is below capacity,” Kinew said, “that is fewer beds than are needed to take care of the patients out there who are very, very sick.”
His proof, he said, is patients being transferred to Brandon because Winnipeg's health-care system is overwhelmed, but new WRHA CEO Vickie Kaminski said on Tuesday she was only aware of one transfer since the post-Boxing Day spike in patient volumes.
The health authority later said in a statement that patient transfers don't happen frequently, but are sometimes necessary to ensure patients are cared for.
Focus on bottom-line, NDP allege
“Manitoba patients aren't getting the care that they need,” Kinew said, referencing the Tories' health-care reforms.
“It's simply because we have a conservative government that wants to save money and cut the health care system we all rely on.”
The NDP's document came to light a day after Winnipeg's health authority shared that city ERs and urgent care centres are currently seeing around 1,000 patients a day due to a spike in viruses — an average increase in patients of about 120 per day from post-Boxing Day last year.
The WHRA previously told CBC the decline in the number of ICU beds — which is for critically ill patients who need consistent monitoring — is intentional.
Since 2017, the health authority has added more beds specifically for cardiac patients requiring intensive care, as well as more high-observation beds and a new category of intermediate beds, which previously didn't exist.
“It is very challenging to compare. It's not apples to apples,” Krista Williams, chief health operations officer, said in an interview last September. “We need to understand all of the beds and how we made those changes to ensure that we're meeting all of the patients' needs across the system.”
As of Sept. 2019, the WRHA says there were 107 critical care beds in total in Winnipeg, which included 61 intensive care beds. There were 113 critical care beds as of January 2019 and 101 in January 2018.
On Tuesday, Kaminski said the issue of overcapacity in critical care units was brought up by doctors a few months ago.
“They asked us to look at what was happening in critical care and what they were seeing as a troubling trend,” she said.
“We're doing a formal review of our ICU capacity so that we know … whether what we've got is going to match the volumes that they can predict.”
Until then, the WRHA is working diligently to staff the vacant ICU beds, primarily with nurses, Kaminski said.
Specialized care needed
NDP health critic Uzoma Asagwara wasn't buying the explanation that other types of beds are making up for previous ICU beds.
“The kinds of patients that are in those beds … those are very sick patients and they're often patients whose level of acute sickness can change on any given day, any given hour and you need specialized staff and nurses who can attend to those changes and those needs,” Asagwara said.
“When you talk about placing people in other beds and making other accommodations, what you're saying is that you're putting your bottom dollar ahead of best practice in patient care and safety.”
ICU care has been consolidated to the three remaining emergency departments in Winnipeg: the Health Sciences Centre, St. Boniface Hospital and Grace Hospital.
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