Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - February 13, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba Under the authority of The City of Winnipeg Charter, the Community Committees listed below will conduct PUBLIC HEARINGS for the purpose of allowing interested persons to make submissions, ask questions or register objections in respect of the application(s) listed below. Information or documents concerning the applications and a description of the procedure to be followed at the public hearings are available for inspection by calling 204-986-2636 to make an appointment at Unit 15-30 Fort Street, or by visiting the City Clerk’s Department, Susan A. Thompson Building, 510 Main Street between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday-Friday, excluding holidays; or on-line at http://www.winnipeg.ca CITY CENTRE COMMUNITY COMMITTEE PUBLIC HEARING Date: Monday, February 24, 2025 Time: 10:30 A.M. Location: City Hall To participate in the hearing, register online at winnipeg.ca/publichearings or by phoning 204-986-4228 by 12:00 noon the business day preceding the meeting. You may also participate in the process by submitting your comments in writing. THIS HEARING CAN BE VIEWED ON LINE AT: https://winnipeg.ca/council/video.asp THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2025 A4 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM NEWS I TOP NEWS The institute’s most recent analysis, completed last year, found the Grace, St. Boniface and Bran- don General hospitals also ranked among the eight worst-performing facilities in Canada. “I feel terribly for the staff because I know how hard they work. I know that they are doing the best they can to provide amazing patient care, but circumstances have put them in this category, which is extremely sad,” Jackson said. “Our nurses tell us continuously that things are not getting better in health care, that, in fact, there are areas where things are deteriorating. Nurses are frustrated. We were promised a change.” Other data collected in the report showed nursing vacancy rates reached 21 per cent last summer, up from 16 per cent during the same period in 2020. While the union admitted those numbers may have since improved, the report said the vacan- cies were “adversely affecting patient safety and the quality of care” as nursing overtime hours surged from 800,000 in 2021 to more than 1.1 million in 2024. The province, in turn, spent $75 million on private-agency nurses to cover 1.2 million nurs- ing hours last year, the report said, citing data it obtained from regional health authorities. The government announced last week it added 1,255 net new hires in hospitals across Manitoba, including 481 nurses. Approximately 60 people came out of retirement and more than 200 left the private sector for the public system, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said. “The concerns that are outlined in the White Paper are concerns that we have been taking very seriously, and we’ve taken action over these past 16 months to address,” Asagwara said. “In some cases, the issues have actually al- ready been completely addressed.” Asagwara acknowledged there were challeng- es in health care, but said the government has made strides to bolster the system by listening to workers and investing in front-line care. The minister pointed to safety improvements on the HSC campus as one recent example. Asagwara has also directed health leaders to divert eight per cent of the dollars earmarked for corporate services to improve patient care before the end of the current fiscal year. The union called the approach “short-sighted” and said it undermines new graduate support and senior nurse retention. “(The) budget reduction ultimatum has effec- tively forced health authorities to cut costs rather than invest in proven retention strategies,” the report said. The document included a slate of recommen- dations for the provincial government. Several were quality-of-life improvements, including creating a centralized shift scheduling system and providing better support for float nurses. The province must also boost incentives to retain senior nurses, further improve facility safety measures, increase transparency by proactively releasing health-care metrics, invest in home-care nurses and address primary-care shortages by making better use of highly quali- fied nurse practitioners, the report said. The union is hosting a news conference today to further discuss the data it uncovered while preparing the report, Jackson said. tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca DATA ● FROM A1 Critical incident numbers detail no overall improvements Report sparks calls for more proactive health system A PATIENT who died after being re- leased from a hospital emergency room was among 31 critical inci- dents reported in Manitoba health-care settings over a three-month period. Four deaths and 27 situations involv- ing a “major” degree of injury were de- clared critical incidents between April 1 and June 30, 2024, as per the provin- cial government’s latest quarterly re- port. The number of deaths was the low- est quarterly total since the first three months of 2019, when four deaths were also reported, a Free Press analysis showed. The overall number of critical inci- dents per quarter ranged between 27 and 59 over the five-year period. Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson and Jason Linklater, president of the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals, said many incidents can be prevented with adequate staffing levels. “If you had more staff, you would have smaller patient loads and a better opportunity to oversee and to monitor patients more effectively,” Jackson said. “(Understaffing) is often identified as an issue in critical incidences, when they’re investigated,” Linklater said. “Short-staffing has all sorts of impli- cations, but certainly safety and risk are right up there in terms of what can happen.” Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said hiring more front-line staff is one of the most important steps the govern- ment can take to prevent critical inci- dents. “We know that when you’re running short of team members, that’s more likely when mistakes or incidents can happen,” they said. “We want to bring the pressures in the health-care system down and improve capacity by adding more people.” The NDP government said 1,255 net- new health-care workers have been hired since April. Some unions say they have not yet seen an impact. Provincial legislation defines a critic- al incident as an unintended event that occurs when health services provided to a person result “in a consequence to him or her that is serious and un- desired,” such as death, injury, disabil- ity or unplanned hospital admission, and does not result from an underlying health condition or “from a risk inher- ent in providing the health services.” The legislation applies to regional health authorities, facilities such as hospitals and personal care homes, and licensed land and air ambulances. Quarterly reports contain limited descriptions of incidents. They do not contain information that could identify patients, staff or locations. The province said each incident is reviewed to make recommendations to avoid harm to others. In the latest report, one death in- volved a patient who went to a hospital emergency room, was discharged home and later returned via ambulance. Two patients died after their medic- al condition changed or deteriorated. “Opportunities for earlier recognition and intervention were not realized” in both cases, the report said. The fourth death was a patient who had self-harmed. “The opportunity to mitigate the risk was not recognized,” the report said. While the report did not go into de- tail, a man died at Health Sciences Cen- tre in May after he self-harmed while recovering from surgery — one day af- ter he self-harmed at the mental-health crisis response centre, sources said at the time. The death was deemed a critical incident. Of the 27 “major” incidents, three patients or residents had suffered skin tissue breakdown. Four people had pressure injuries (two were related to medical devices). “When you’re looking at skin break- down, and I see a lot of them have to do with residents in long-term care, these injuries … are about the inability for staff to turn residents, provide skin care, provide positioning so they’re not getting those injuries,” Jackson said. “A lot of that has to do with patient loads and the inability to actually monitor and oversee patients at all times.” A delay in diagnosis and treatment was associated with serious harm in one case. Another person needed “emergency intervention” after receiv- ing an unintended medication. Asagwara and the union leaders said critical incidents have a profound im- pact on patients, families and health- care workers. “Any incident, any loss of life is a tra- gedy,” Asagwara said. “When an incident happens that re- sults in a critical incident, it is absolute- ly devastating for staff,” Jackson said. Asagwara said the health system will never be perfect, but learning from in- cidents and promising to do better is the only way to make it the best system possible. Linklater said the system needs to be more proactive than reactive. “A lot of times, we see things ear- marked as learning opportunities, when we really should have learned from similar incidences a long time ago,” he said. Linklater said understaffing and heavy workloads increase the risk of incidents being underreported. A critical incident was declared after a 49-year-old patient died while waiting hours for care in HSC’s adult emer- gency room Jan. 7. Shared Health’s investigation of Chad Giffin’s death is expected to conclude soon. chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca CHRIS KITCHING Students hurt in school bus crash near Swan Lake ABOUT 20 students are recovering from min- or injuries after a school bus was involved in a collision near Swan Lake on Wednesday. A motorist struck a school bus full of Prairie Spirit School Division students between 8:30 a.m. and 9 a.m., the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said. RCMP spokeswoman Michelle Lissel told the Free Press about 20 youth, ranging in level from kindergarten to Grade 11, were aboard the school bus when it was hit by a truck. “The truck collided with the rear end of the bus, and the bus rolled on its side. Minor in- juries to all students in the bus — mostly from glass breaking and stuff like that,” Lissel said by phone Wednesday afternoon. The collision happened near the intersection of Road 28 North and Road 66 West in the Municipality of Lorne. The collision was about 12 kilometres west of the town of Swan Lake. “All students were taken to hospital for as- sessment and further treatment if necessary,” superintendent Cheryl Mangin said in an email. Mangin added RCMP has assured the div- ision none of the injuries were life-threatening. The truck driver and the children and teen- agers on the scene were taken to hospital via ambulance and private vehicle, RCMP said. Lissel said the truck was headed south on Road 66 and the bus, which was headed to both an elementary school and secondary school in the area, was going east on Road 28 when they collided. The police spokeswoman said a traffic ana- lyst visited the intersection to determine what happened. She did not have any additional details about the cause of the incident or the truck driver. maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca MAGGIE MACINTOSH LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER ;