WINNIPEG – Nearly seven years after Brian Sinclair died in an emergency room, the province says it finally has a timeline to try and prevent a similar tragedy from occurring.
The Manitoba government has put together a team of more than 20 people to find out how to implement 63 recommendations made last year.
The recommendations stem from an inquest into Sinclair’s death. He died in the Health Sciences Centre emergency department in 2008. He was there for 34 hours before he was discovered deceased from what was later determined to be an easily-treatable infection.
The recommendations will start to be applied to 18 Manitoba hospitals with the busiest emergency departments first.
Many of the recommendations focus on policy and procedures as well as electronic health records.
The report says it will take up to two years to decide if it’s appropriate to have an aboriginal elder and a security guard posted in emergency departments.
Other recommendations – such as ensuring staff intervene when a patient starts vomiting in a waiting room – can be implemented more quickly.
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“We’ve already seen changes from the time of his passing to now we’re looking forward to making more changes,” said Health Minister Sharon Blady, who mentioned the way patients are triaged at HSC is one changed that has taken place.
She did not have an estimate on how much it will cost to implement all recommendations.
“A lot of these things are going to come from existing resources in existing programs, and a lot of this is really about culture change in healthcare,” said Blady.
The timeline for recommendations range from short term (within nine months) to long term (longer than 24 months).
In a statement to Global News the WRHA provided a status update on the 63 recommendations. One has been completed which is the elimination of paper triage lists. There are 40 recommendations in progress across the health region and there are 22 that still need to be implemented.
The government is taking longer than necessary to implement the recommendations, Opposition Leader Brian Pallister said.
“Some of these recommendations are common sense and should already be in place,” said Pallister.
Recommendations include reviewing the feasibility of patients seeing a nurse first in an emergency department and looking at the possibility of expanding the Aboriginal Resource Worker position to weekends are estimated to be completed within 24 months.
— With files from Canadian Press
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