Minor treatment clinic announced for Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg

The Manitoba government has announced funding to create a new minor treatment clinic at Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre.

Health Minister Audrey Gordon says the clinic will aim to relieve pressure on the hospital’s busy emergency room, which has been plagued with long wait times.

Gordon pledged $3 million in provincial money to help establish the clinic at a Friday press conference. That includes roughly $500,00 for the cost of renovations and retrofitting the existing area and nearly $2.4 million in annual operating costs.

The province says the clinic will be located near HSC’s emergency room and will provide care to patients with non-urgent illnesses or injuries who come to the ER.

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Doctor Manon Pelletier, medical lead at HSC, says the clinic will be open for 12 hours a day, seven days a week. She said it will staffed by one doctor, one nurse, a clerk, and, she said, possibly a nurse practitioner.

“The clinic will offer another option for a population of patients with less urgent concerns who may not have a primary care provider or the ability to travel to another care centre,” Pelletier said in a government release.

“Emergency department teams will continue to triage and assess patients upon arrival at the emergency department and will identify appropriate patients whose concerns can appropriately be seen in the clinic.

“Patients without connections to primary care in the surrounding community and those living in remote northern communities that require timely access to diagnostics and specialty services will be seen in this clinic, which will aim to provide care in a culturally safe environment and facilitate primary care connections.”

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The clinic is set to open in the summer, officials said.

The Progressive Conservative government has been under fire over concerns about the state of Manitoba’s health-care system.

Late last month a patient died while waiting in a hallway at the Health Sciences Centre’s emergency room.

On Thursday Shared Health announced the patient’s death is being investigated as a critical incident.