Province adding more physician hours to minor injury clinic at Winnipeg's HSC

The province of Manitoba is adding more physician hours to the Health Sciences Centre's minor treatment clinic to increase its capacity over the next four weeks and help reduce wait times in the hospital's emergency department.

This additional funding means the clinic will haveanother physician for six hours a day, seven days a week during afour-week pilot project,said Dr. Manon Pelletier, HSC's chief medical officer,at a news conference Friday.

Until now, the clinic which treats patients with less-urgent needs has typically been staffed with one doctor and one nurse practitioner per shift, which can slow things down, Pelletier said.

"When we're able to have more than one provider in the clinic, we're able to pull a lot more patients and see them a lot sooner," she said.

The clinic serves about 30 to 40 patients a day, with about 2,100 patients diverted to the clinic since last fall, she said.

It's hard to know exactly how many more patients the clinic could serve with the additional staffing, Pelletier said, but she estimated it could allow the clinic to treat at least a dozen more patients a day.

The clinic opened in August to divert patientsfrom theemergency room at Manitoba's largest hospital. Those patients account for about 14 per cent of visits to HSC's emergency department, health officials said at Friday's news conference.

For now, the expanded physician hours are only set to last for four weeks so that the province can measure how much of an effect the change has,said Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara.

Depending on how things go, the pilot could be extended. The model could also be put in place inother hospitals, Asagwara said.

Progressive Conservative health critic Kathleen Cook said it's good to see the expansion of a what was initially aninitiative of the former PC government, even if it is temporary.

"However, we are still waiting for any plan from the NDP to add much-needed staff to our health-care system," she said via email.

"One doctor for just four weeks certainly won't cut it."

The health minister acknowledged Friday's announcement may not sound impressive to everyone.

"To some folks, maybe seeing the addition of onephysician andexpanded hours in this way may not seem significant," said Asagwara.

"But we've heard it very clearly from these doctors that it will make an immediate positive impact, and it speaks to the work that they've been doing to better understand the ways in which patients needs need to be better met."

Recent data from Shared Healthshows that in November, 10 per cent of patients at the Health Sciences Centre ER waited close to 14 hours for care.

In June, that number known as the 90th percentile wait time was just over 11 hours.

The median wait time at the hospital's ER in November was just under four hours, according to Shared Health.