Emergency physicians at St. Boniface Hospital said it’s demoralizing to see long wait times at Manitoba’s second-largest hospital, and elsewhere in the health-care system, having become increasingly normalized over the years.

Dr. Aaron Guinn says 57 people were waiting for care at the Winnipeg emergency department as of his last shift Wednesday evening. The doctor said those numbers would have once been “unheard of,” but it wasn’t even the worst day the department has had this week.

About 70 people were stuck in the waiting room Monday, Dr. Noam Katz — who also works at the emergency department — told CBC News. Some were waiting for care for 20 hours or more without seeing any movement, he said.

Guinn said there were 75 people waiting for care that evening, which he said would be an all-time record for the hospital. The previous record of 74 was set shortly after the new emergency department opened last fall, Guinn said.

“I think even a year ago, … I would have said [Wednesday] was near one of our worst all-time days,” Guinn said Thursday.

“As of now, having [57] people in the waiting room strikes me as a bad day, but not crazy.”

The doctors said the main issue leading to chronically long waits such as the ones earlier this week is “access block.” Access block is when emergency departments have to keep patients that would otherwise be ready to be moved because there is no room elsewhere in the system.

Guinn said 52 out of 64 treatment spaces in the department Wednesday evening were occupied by people awaiting admission to other wards, leaving emergency physicians only a dozen beds to work with.

“We will try and start to see them in non-traditional care areas like in hallways, like in the waiting room, because just trying to do something is better than doing nothing,” he said.

“It’s terrible for the patients.… It hurts to see other people in that situation as well, … like elderly or vulnerable people who are waiting over a day to be seen by a physician, stuck in a hallway somewhere.”

Not a new problem, doctor says

Katz said access block is not a new problem. He pointed to, among other things, a 2024 report from the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians whose co-authors include a former St. Boniface doctor.

It’s “the frog in a pot of boiling water,” he said. “We now say … if we’re seeing patients within 10 hours, that’s great. When you compare that to what we used to do, that’s obscene.”

Katz said a failure to act over the decades has left many physicians demoralized. At least one colleague recently said they might move out of emergency medicine altogether, Katz said.

“If we cannot provide emergency care to the patients in an emergency department, this is what’s going to lead to more bad patient outcomes, including the patient deaths that we’ve seen,” he said.

Stacey Ross, 55, died after an 11-hour wait at St. Boniface Hospital in January. The death is being investigated as a critical incident. Judy Burns, 68, died in the same hospital a few days later. Burns’ family has said their concerns were repeatedly dismissed by staff members at the emergency department.

The Progressive Conservatives called for a public inquiry into those deaths Wednesday, as well as those of six-month-old Luca Teng at HSC Children’s Hospital and 82-year-old Genevieve Price, who died after long waits at Grace and St. Boniface hospitals in November.

Visits up since renovations: minister

A Winnipeg Regional Health Authority spokesperson said they could not confirm numbers seen Monday were an all-time record, but that there has certainly been a recent increase in admissions.

They said higher patient volumes can be attributed in part to a severe respiratory virus season and a surge in visitors since the new emergency department opened.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said in a statement that admissions are up roughly 12 per cent since then, with the hospital seeing about 400 more visits every month. There is an additional internal medicine doctor at St. Boniface to help handle the increase, Asagwara said.

Asagwara said the government has taken several measures to improve patient flow, including adding 36 fully staffed beds at the hospital.

Guinn said the hospital has made many changes to address emergency department waits over the years. Most recently, a doctor has been assigned to assist the triaging process, he said.

“Triage these days is a terrifying place to be as a nurse, especially when you have 70 people in the waiting room,” Guinn said.

St. Boniface recently became the third hospital to be grey-listed by Manitoba nurses over the past year because of safety concerns.

“You have two nurses up there who are all by themselves … expected to somehow provide medical care to those 70 patients,” Guinn said. “That’s a joke. Like, that’s not physically possible.”

Expansion concerns

A $141-million project to expand the hospital’s emergency department is expected to conclude late this year, increasing capacity.

Katz and Guinn said modernization is making a difference on the quality of care but are concerned the extra room won’t address the core access block issue.

When your sink gets clogged, the solution to fixing it isn’t building a bigger sink.– Dr. Noam Katz

“When your sink gets clogged, the solution to fixing it isn’t building a bigger sink,” Katz said.

He said that so far, he hasn’t heard whether there will be additional funding for the nursing staff required to have the expansion ready to be operational in the fall.

Guinn said he fears there won’t be additional doctors to cover the expansion either, saying a shortage of ER doctors continues despite ongoing international and domestic recruitment efforts in the province.

“I’m worried about where we’re going,” the doctor said.

Guinn said he thinks the government is doing the best it can, but the situation is dire.

“I stay up at night worrying … my parents won’t have anybody to look after them,” he said. “[That] there’s not going to be anything available to them.”

The WRHA spokesperson said work to reduce wait times across city hospitals is ongoing. They said 10 new critical care beds, and nearly 100 beds for medicine, surgery and mental health have opened in the city since April 2025.