A new report on emergency room wait times shows that Winnipeg’s St. Boniface General Hospital has the longest median length of stay in the province, coming in at 10.5 hours. The report, titled “Canadians are waiting too long in the Emergency Room,” was published by the Montreal Economic Institute, an independent organization which researches and reports on public policy. Their research looked at how much time patients across the country spent in emergency rooms from when they entered and registered to when they were discharged or admitted to other departments. The report covers April 1, 2024 to February 28, 2025 in Manitoba. Patients were reported to have stayed for a Manitoba-wide median of four hours. That marks an increase of six minutes from the previous year and 48 minutes over the past five years. Of the 54 emergency rooms assessed in Manitoba, Winnipeg’s Grace Hospital had the second longest median length of stay at 10 hours and six minutes, followed by Health Sciences Centre (adult ER) at seven hours and 48 minutes and Concordia Hospital at 6 hours and 42 minutes. Seven Oaks General Hospital had the lowest median length of stay in Winnipeg at six hours and six minutes. Meanwhile, outside of Winnipeg, emergency rooms at Arborg and Districts Health Centre, Morris General Hospital and Vita and District Health Centre all had the lowest median length of stay in the province at 30 minutes, per the report. Country-wide increases in wait times: report Nationwide, the median length of stay ranged from two hours and 45 minutes in Newfoundland and Labrador to five hours and 23 minutes in Quebec. Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia had not yet provided the requested data, according to the report. Since 2020, all provinces in the report have seen an increase in the median ER length of stay — with Prince Edward Island witnessing the highest increase by 1 hour and 35 minutes. Manitoba’s Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said in May that that province is working with frontline health-care workers to create a team focused on lowering emergency room wait times, adding that “wait times are very, very long.” A spokesperson for the WRHA said “significant work” has been underway to address wait times in the province. “The opening of new Minor Injury and Illness Clinics and Extended Hours Primary Care Clinics have increased access to primary care for patients and have begun to reduce ED (emergency department) overcrowding,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. The spokesperson said as of the end of May, there have been 14,425 visits to both minor injury clinics and extended hour primary care clinics in Winnipeg. The WRHA added that plans are in place to reopen the emergency department at Victoria General Hospital, which will provide more services for people living in south Winnipeg. They also noted patient discharges have been taking place on the weekends to help add spaces for new patients. The spokesperson added that waiting to be seen time has dropped at St. Boniface to 3.95 hours in April, a 29 per cent drop from March, and both Grace Hospital and the Health Sciences Centre saw 25 per cent drops in waiting to be seen time in April. “We continue to work with the frontlines, add more beds, and create more access to primary care to reverse the trend of growing emergency wait times that began during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the spokesperson said.
