New Winnipeg home-care scheduling system described as 'disruptive,' causing 'absolute chaos'
Centralized scheduling intended to make system better is not working, clients, staff say
Some Winnipeg home-care clients are having trouble with cancelled, delayed and ill-timed visits since the rollout of a new, centralized scheduling system.
George Cannell, a resident at the Villa Cabrini retirement home in Osborne Village, says it's become a running joke among residents.
"Oh yeah, we talk about home care all the time," Cannell said. "'Oh, did your home care show up today?' 'No, mine didn't come today, did yours?'"
Several seniors and health-care representatives have expressed frustration with changes to the home-care scheduling system.
Data from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority shows 3.12 per cent of home care visits were cancelled in June 2025, up from 1.68 per cent in June 2024.
Cannell said he has been receiving home care for eight years. A home-care aide visits several times a day to help him with medication.
He's noticed a big difference in the reliability of his home-care service for more than a month.
"They're being stretched too thin," Cannell said.
The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority implemented a centralized scheduling system for home-care workers nearly five months ago.
Before the change, scheduling of home-care visits was divided into three city quadrants through the health authority's Access centres, which offer a variety of health and social services.
Health-care aides and nurses worked out of their assigned Access centres and, more often than not, maintained the same routines and visits, allowing for greater continuity in scheduling and care, said Margaret Schroeder, president of Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 204, which represents health-care aides and scheduling clerks.
Changes to the scheduling system came after an internal review into the case of Katherine Ellis, who didn't receive home care before she died in 2023. The review said the lack of home care was due to gaps and breakdowns in communication and procedures.
The shift in the scheduling system was also meant to address issues with health-care aides having to work after hours, Schroeder said, and deal with schedulers calling in sick — the idea being that having them all in one place would help mitigate the effect of being short-staffed.
However, Darlene Jackson, president of the Manitoba Nurses Union, said the changes — which nurses started telling her about in February — have caused "absolute chaos."
"We're hearing from nurses that have been scheduled to do 10 insulins in an hour in a fairly large part of the city with no travel time in between," says Jackson. "So we have people waiting hours to eat, because it's impossible to do that work."
According to data obtained by CBC News, over the past five years, as the number of nursing clients receiving home care has increased from 4,565 to 4,846, the number of nursing hours assigned has declined from 27,749 to 27,342.
However, the number of hours assigned does fluctuate from month to month based on individual care needs.
"We can't do more with less," said one nurse, whose name CBC has agreed not to use because they fear reprisal from their employer.
The nurse said administering insulin isn't as simple as giving the patient a jab; there is an assessment involved when visiting a client with diabetes. The nurse also said having families administer insulin when home-care workers aren't there should only be a last resort.
The nurse, who has been performing home-care visits as a health-care worker for over a decade, said now, when they open their phone apps with their appointments each day, nurses have to ask themselves, "Who can be missed today?"
Manitoba Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara acknowledged that the rollout of the centralized system has been "disruptive" and said they are working to resolve the issues.
"We want to make sure that when folks are opening up that app, they're seeing a schedule, that they're seeing other clients in a way that is achievable and that really motivates them to provide the highest quality of care and that allows for them to provide care and not worry about cancelling appointments," Asagwara said.
The nurse who spoke to the CBC said with the changes to the system, there have been instances where nurses have been on their way to a client's home when the scheduled visit disappears from their phone app, and they don't know why.
"The problem is that when we see all the names of all these people we're supposed to provide care for, and when they start being removed from our app, we know that they're not going to get that care that day," the nurse said.
Efforts to remedy the situation have centred around improving the centralized scheduling system, bringing in more expertise and hiring more health-care workers and scheduling clerks, the health minister said.
"I know that change can always be difficult, but what we've also seen is that there are opportunities here to improve this centralized rollout and improve these services overall," Asagwara said.
As of July 24, they've added 10 new scheduling clerks and are in the process of hiring more health-care workers, Asagwara said.
Situation leading to burnout: nurse
The nurse who spoke about the problems sees this as a step in the right direction, but stresses there will be a learning curve. Nurses and health-care aides are experiencing burnout right now, having to dash from visit to visit, with no time for a break, they said.
It affects the care they can give to those who need it, they said.
"We've had clients whose wounds have deteriorated based on having missed visits.… We don't want to be providing this kind of care," the nurse said. "We want to provide holistic care and we feel like we're being micromanaged."
Cannell said health-care aides who come into his home have said they are being overworked.
There are enough people in his building using home care to allow a handful of health-care workers to be assigned to his building, rather than having different workers in and out of the building all day and night, he said.
"It'd run much more efficiently," Cannell said. "The only alternative is to bring in a private nurse, and they're not cheap. A lot of people can't afford it."
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