The Manitoba government is teaming up with front-line health-care workers to launch a new task force aimed at reducing emergency room wait times and improving patient safety in the emergency department.
Health, Seniors and Long-Term Care Minister Uzoma Asagwara announced Thursday that together with front-line health-care staff, they have formed a Lower Wait Time and System Improvement team and created a strategy to reduce blockages in the health care system and reduce patient wait times.
“The emergency department is the front door to our health-care system, and its ability to function efficiently for patients is influenced by the decisions made in departments across the system – from acute care, to medicine wards, to community care,” said Asagwara. “The Lower Wait Time and System Improvement Team brings experts from across the system to work together to identify bed blocks, implement change and smooth out processes so patients can get in to see a doctor, get treatment and get home faster. We’re going to move forward hand in hand with the front-line workers who deliver care.”
This new team will be led by Dr. Paul Ratana, provincial specialty lead of emergency medicine at Health Sciences Centre (HSC) Winnipeg, and Dr. Kendiss Olafson, internal medicine and critical care at HSC Winnipeg. They will also be joined by other physicians, nurses and other allied health professionals.
“No one understands the delays in patient care better than those on the front lines of health care,” said Olafson. “They face the daily frustration of a system that is often slow, fragmented and siloed. Our goal is to address some of the most challenging and discouraging aspects of care delivery –supporting the quality of front-line work without adding to workloads.”
The strategy, developed by the team, outlines ways to increase or add services that affect the timeliness of care at three main points, including triage and admission if necessary, inpatient care and access to outpatient treatment.
The initiatives include increasing the number of endoscopy procedures, including over the weekend, exploring models to shorten the wait time between triage and initial physician assessments, and expanding the community intravenous program to allow more patients to recover at home.
Another part of the strategy includes adding more front-line staff to support consistent, safe staffing levels in emergency departments. This may include using health care aides to check vitals in the emergency department waiting room. They would also be trained to observe patients and notice if they are showing signs of deterioration.
This new team and strategy were developed after a 49-year-old man died after waiting eight hours in the Health Science Centre's emergency room. Staff noticed he had deteriorated, and he was transported to the resuscitation room, where he died a short time later.