A new cardiac-care zone, where patients waiting in emergency rooms can be seen by a specialist, is among a number of new measures announced in Manitoba’s latest budget aimed at tackling ballooning ER wait times. 

Along with that cardiac zone at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg, the NDP government also plans to create a mental health zone at Health Sciences Centre, the provincial spending plan released Tuesday says.

The aim is to have people who currently wait to see a doctor in the ER instead get to see a specialist sooner, and so reduce congestion in the emergency room.

Finance Minister Adrien Sala acknowledged Tuesday there is still a lot of work to be done to alleviate wait times.

“That is why this budget focuses on speeding up ER wait times by making some investments in the creation of zones adjacent to ERs,” he said.

“We can perhaps pull them from that ER wait out into this zone, where they can get immediate access to support.”

This comes as the provincial government faces mounting criticism over emergency room wait times after incidents including the death of Stacey Ross, 55, who died on Jan. 16 after an 11-hour wait for admission at St. Boniface. 

On one day earlier this month, emergency room doctors at St. Boniface Hospital told CBC about 70 people were stuck in the waiting room. Some had waited for care for 20 hours or more, the doctors said.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority dashboard showed that on Tuesday, the wait times at Health Sciences Centre and Grace Hospital were over 10 hours.

A memo obtained by CBC this month also said the online dashboard had multiple flaws that made waits sometimes appear shorter than they should.  

Tuesday’s budget announcement was met with skepticism from the Opposition Progressive Conservatives, who said it doesn’t address issues like staffing and access to home care. 

PC health critic Kathleen Cook said she is waiting for more details before she can comment specifically on the new zones, but said the promises in the budget “are contingent on staffing and staff retention.”

“There is nothing in this budget to deal with that,” she said following its release.

The 2026-27 budget also promised $2.3 million to open 32 “alternate level” care beds at Siloam Mission, intended for people who are occupying a hospital bed but are not acutely ill, or don’t require the resources of a hospital.

There are currently 96 of these beds across the province, including 20 at St. Boniface Street Links and 27 at Holy Family Home in Winnipeg. 

Sala said the new zones and care beds promised in the budget are “important measures that say, ‘We hear you, we know there is more work to do.'”

The association that represents Manitoba doctors urged the province to consult with physicians when it comes to implementation.

“Let’s make sure it is done right,” Doctors Manitoba president Dr. Nichelle Desilets said Tuesday.

She said the cardiac zones show “promise,” but added the province is already short on cardiac specialists.

“When I think of it from my family doctor’s viewpoint, I want my specialist colleagues doing the work they need to be doing,” she said.

Social workers at ERs

Social workers will also soon be staffing ERs and urgent cares 24/7, according to Tuesday’s budget, to ensure patients are safely discharged from the emergency rooms.

Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson said both the social workers and the alternative beds are welcome, but said they may not address the root cause of ER wait times.

“The root cause of the lengthy wait times is the inability to discharge from our medical units into long-term care facilities,” she said.

The government needs to address the “bottlenecking” that occurs in emergency rooms because there aren’t enough beds in the system, said Jackson.

She also said too many initiatives, like measures to improve safety in health care, come after a hospital has been grey listed, meaning nurses are discouraged from working there, as has recently happened at St. Boniface Hospital and the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg, along with Thompson General Hospital.

Officials with the province could not provide a timeline for when the new measures announced in the budget will be put in place.

The budget for the cardiac zone will come from the $22.1 million committed for the new cardiac centre of excellence in St. Boniface. The mental health zones will be funded with $13.6 million in new money, the budget stated.