Indigenous, Black patients wait longer for care in Winnipeg ERs: report
Race-based data report shows African and/or Black patients wait longest to be seen
Patients who identify as Indigenous, African or Black are generally spending longer in Winnipeg emergency department waiting rooms than white people, according to a new report examining how different racial groups experience patient care.
The data also found Indigenous patients and white patients present with similar triage scores — a measure of how severe their medical issues are — which counters "the common stereotype of Indigenous people using the emergency departments inappropriately," says the report prepared by Dr. Marcia Anderson, who led the race, ethnicity and Indigenous identity data project team on behalf of Manitoba Shared Health.
It also found patients who are African and/or Black wait the longest to be seen, on average, even though they're among the most likely to present with a serious medical issue.
According to the report, the average wait time across emergency rooms for all patients in Manitoba is 3.4 hours. African and/or Black patients wait an average of 3.9 hours — the longest wait of any racial or ethnic group.
The report, released Tuesday, recommends all emergency department staff "be prioritized for participation" in Indigenous cultural safety and anti-racism training, along with anti-Black racism training.
"Emergency departments are very stressful environments to work in, and the health system is facing challenges in many areas," Anderson said in the report.
"Unfortunately, in a system under stress, it is often those who are the most marginalized and who have the fewest resources to draw on facing the most severe impacts."
The report found that Indigenous patients were the most likely to leave emergency rooms before they could access the care they need, with more than 16 per cent leaving without being seen by a doctor over the data collection period, from May 11, 2023, until Sept. 30, 2024.
Anderson said longer wait times, racism and discrimination may play a role in why Indigenous patients are two times more likely to leave without being seen compared to white patients.
The report also found white people are more likely to be assigned a more acute triage score — meaning they're determined to have conditions in need of more urgent care — which may result in those patients being prioritized for care quicker.
The data collection began in 2023, when the province's health-care system started asking patients to self-declare their racial or ethnic background as part of the hospital admission process.
The data from those self-declarations informed the report, which only released information from Winnipeg hospitals and the largest population groups to ensure a large enough sample size.
The report's data was informed by more than 618,000 emergency room visits between May 2023 and September 2024. Anderson said only eight per cent of people visiting emergency rooms over that period declined to provide racial or ethnic data.
"Health-care experiences and outcomes vary significantly across racial and ethnic groups," Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said at a news conference on Tuesday.
"These disparities are known and experienced, but have historically lacked consistent and high-quality data, and that data is needed to understand and correct the problem," they said.
"I'm glad to say that is changing here in Manitoba."
Data 'only 1 lens into the problem': doctor
Dr. Barry Lavallee, CEO of the Indigenous health organization Keewatinohk Inniniw Minoayawin Inc., said the report doesn't go far enough to capture the lived experiences of First Nations people attempting to access health-care services in emergency rooms across the province.
"The reliance on stats and epidemiology really tries to sanitize what really goes on in the emergency rooms around wait times, around being assigned different [triage] scores, around what really happens. I don't see any of it in there," he said.
Racism within the heath-care system is a well-known issue among Indigenous communities, said Lavallee. The numbers in the report are "only one lens into the problem" of anti-First Nations racism experienced by people trying to access medical care, he said.
"The problem with this report [is] it tries to sanitize, and it tries to disperse the impact of racism within emergency rooms."
He said further reporting should focus on qualitative data, gathering information from First Nations people about their specific experiences when trying to receive emergency care.
"If we're only jumping off this data, it's a weak argument," said Lavallee, adding the data alone doesn't help researchers make conclusions about why First Nations people wait longer for care.
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