The Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union (MGEU), which represents roughly 200 allied health workers in the Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority, says patients in that region are waiting too long to see allied health professionals and staff are concerned about impacts on patients.
A one-month statistical snapshot from October 2024 of how many people in the Interlake-Eastern health region were waiting to access care in six al¬lied health areas – speech language therapy, audiology, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, dietetics and mental health services – shows what MGEU says are unacceptable wait times.
MGEU president Kyle Ross last Thursday the six areas are the ones with the “longest waiting lists,” but wait times are troubling across the allied-health board, and more staff have to be hired.
“These [six] professions don’t have enough people providing services for Manitobans in Interlake-Eastern. People have to wait, which is impacting their quality of life and impacting their ability to be out in the community and doing things,” said Ross. “We’re really hopeful the government and the health authority will step up and recognize that these wait times are unacceptable. Manitobans expect a quality health-care system and they’re not getting it right now.”
MGEU represents about 32,000 members in total across a diverse range of sectors and occupations, including in health care. Health-care support staff (e.g., health care aides) and allied health professionals are among the groups MGEU represents.
MGEU executed a freedom of information (FIPPA) request to acquire IERHA wait-time data from October. The data show a total of 981 people waiting for service across the six allied health areas.
Two hundred and ninety-one people were waiting for speech language therapy service (233 outpatients, 50 pediatric and eight PCH), 77 people were waiting for audiology service, 57 people were waiting for occupational therapy (13 acute care, 44 home care), 158 outpatients were waiting for physiotherapy, 311 people were waiting for mental health services (79 adult CMH, 63 child and adolescent CMH, 165 direct access to psychiatry and 4 for psychology assessments), and 97 people were waiting for dietetic service (41 people from Lake Manitoba east and 56 from Lake Winnipeg east).
“People feel they’re waiting too long. When we talk to Manitobans and they’re looking six to eight months out for an appointment, that’s a great amount of the time when they’re in pain or dealing with another [condition]. Our members in these allied health professions want to provide that service. They don’t want people to have this lingering and dragging on; they want to be able to address the issue as soon as possible,” said Ross. “Without having enough hands to provide that quality care, we’re not seeing that care. Manitobans expect better.”
Mental health services had the greatest number of people (311) waiting for service in October 2024. Ross said there may be two reasons for that relatively high number: a greater number of people reaching out for mental health supports now that mental health challenges are becoming more normalized, and fewer allied health professionals available to provide mental health services.
Ideally, wait times would be “reasonable,” he said. What’s reasonable to one patient may not be reasonable to another, depending on what medical condition needs addressing.
“People using the health-care system would have to feel it’s reasonable – I can’t speak for someone who’s in pain or experiencing something else – and they would understand it may take a bit of time to get access to some service. But it would be within a reasonable amount of time,” he said. “But today, most Manitobans are telling us they’re not experiencing reasonable waits. That’s what it comes down to. Weeks would probably be reasonable, not months and years to get health-care.”
Because there are too many people to treat and too few allied health professionals to manage the workload, patients might feel as though they being pushed as quickly as possible through the system.
“Staff are saying they’re frustrated because they want to provide consistent, quality care. They want adequate time and to not feel so rushed. They feel as if they’re pushing patients through as fast as they can. They have to see as many patients as they can because the demand is so high. And I’m sure the patients feel they’re being rushed,” said Ross. “We need more hands to provide these services. Those professions are in need right across the province. We need to recruit people into these professions so that Manitobans get the quality care they expect.”
Last fall MGEU’s support staff members, some of whom work in the IERHA, accepted a new four-year collective agreement that included significant wage increases. That was a step in the right direction to addressing retention in a different care group in the health-care system.
The union is currently in bargaining negotiations for its allied health members. Staff shortages in many specialized areas need be addressed in order to improve working conditions and keep allied health workers from leave the profession altogether or leaving Manitoba for better working conditions elsewhere.
“We’re raising this issue with government. The government needs a strong focus on staffing and has to find creative ways to solve this problem. Staffing is a major problem and it’s not an easy thing to solve,” said Ross. “The government consists of a large group of people with a lot of minds thinking about this, and I think we have to get creative and find a way to get Manitobans entering allied health programs such as speech language therapy and occupational therapy, and get them to work in rural communities or their home communities, where they can support their own communities and make them a better place for everyone.”
In the short-term, allied health professionals need to be retained because if they start leaving there won’t be enough people to replace them, said Ross. Some of the things the government could do to retain and recruit allied health staff is offer incentives and create a long-term plan to manage human resources.
“We have to find incentives to get people to take up allied health professions, but we also need to ensure that the staff we have now want to stay and continue working in their professions,” said Ross. “It’s a crucial time for the government. It needs to create a good plan to ensure we retain the staff we have and build upon recruitment efforts, finding ways to get people to take up these professions.”
Although the IERHA is one of the smaller health regions, Ross said it has similar issues – staff shortages – to the other regions, and it’s trying different ways to address the issue.
“As an employer, the IERHA is doing a lot of things in trying to correct these issues, but this is a difficult nut to crack, trying to get people to take up a profession and trying to retain the people you have,” he said. “It’s unfortunate we’re in this situation, but we have to find a way to get out of it.”
A representative for the Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority said the RHA is engaged in a number of strategies to retain and recruit new allied staff in order to reduce patient wait times.
“These include offering students opportunities to experience health care via summer placements, internships, education funding and job shadowing. We partner with educational institutions to offer our health region as a training site, recognizing that these are opportunities for students to form relationships with staff, who can make transition to the working world more seamless for new grads,” said the representative. “Where possible, we partner with communities and educational institutions to offer training locally, removing barriers that may exist to accessing health-care education. We continue our work with the provincial government’s recruitment and retention office to bring more health care workers to the Interlake region.”
