Media Release
CIHI data shows WRHA performing well on the majority of health indicators
Winnipeg Regional Health Authority
Thursday, November 28, 2019
Data released today by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) indicates the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority’s (WRHA)* performance is either average or better than average for 69% of the health indicators that it monitors.
“We are encouraged by the fact that we have been able to maintain our positive status on many of CIHI’s indicators through our period of necessary but undeniably distributive changes,” said Réal Cloutier, president and CEO of the WRHA.
“We are extremely proud of the work done by all of our staff, nurses and physicians across the region in maintaining safe and timely patient care. With the major changes complete, our focus now is on stabilizing our system and making systematic adjustments and refinements to realize the true potential of this new, modernized health system.”
The WRHA is among the top-performing health regions in Canada on a number of indicators including our low rates of Caesarian sections among low-risk mothers, low number of hospitalizations for people who can appropriately be cared for as outpatients, and the low portion of long-term care residents who suffer worsening depression in care – a metric where we outperform all other regions across the country.
“The biggest value in the CIHI reporting is that it helps highlight areas for us to target improvement. We are committed to become the most improved health region in Canada,” said Krista Williams, chief nursing officer and chief health operations officer of the WRHA. “We recognize that there are areas of our system we still need to improve on and we will. For example, we have committed to the provincial goal of meeting the Canadian benchmark in emergency wait times by March 2021 and remain confident we will be able to achieve that goal.”
While CIHI reports Manitoba’s emergency wait times as statistically “average” when compared with the rest of Canada, Williams believes there remains room for improvement and indicated the WRHA remains committed to reducing wait times for patients.
* the reporting period for most indicators ends March 31, 2019, consequently the performance of Health Sciences Centre Winnipeg is included in WRHA’s results. HSC transferred to Shared Health in April 2019.