Doctors Manitoba Warns of Growing Backlogs in Healthcare System – Winnipeg | The Canadian News

Doctors Manitoba says not only is the backlog in diagnosis and surgery in the province continuing to grow, but a pushback is also taking place across much of the health care system.

Figures for November and December 2021 show that the backlog of surgical and diagnostic procedures is 153,320 cases, which represents an increase of 1,204 since the last estimate.

57,287 surgery cases have been delayed, an increase of more than 1,600 since the last figures provided.

However, slight improvements have been made to delays in imaging cases and other diagnostic procedures.

READ MORE: Over half a million fewer surgeries performed in Canada since the start of COVID-19

These numbers are before Omicron laid waste to the province.

But the delays are now being felt throughout much of the health care system.

“I’ve never seen it this bad,” said Dr. Kristjan Thompson, president of Doctors Manitoba.

He says it’s being caused by both a sharp increase in demand for care and an increase in absenteeism and isolation requirements for doctors and staff.

Care support includes delays in access to hospital beds, emergency care, availability of ambulances, outpatient clinics, and medical clinics.

“Patients face long delays in admission and it is not uncommon for patients to wait days in the ER for admission,” Thompson said. “And this is also making patients in our waiting room wait a lot longer.”

The support includes outages and staffing shortages at many rural hospitals.

“Over the next several weeks, Manitobans will see delays when seeking care and this is due to the stretched capacity and limited resources in our health care system right now,” Thompson said.

“We just don’t have the ramp-up capacity to deal with the volumes we’re seeing.”