Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen has announced major changes to the health care system in Winnipeg pertaining to emergency rooms. Emergency and acute health care services will be consolidated at three sites: The Health Sciences Centre, St. Boniface Hospital and Grace Hospital. Goertzen explains that, having fewer emergency rooms, but better-equipped and better-staffed emergency rooms, will lead to better care.

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Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen"Those hospitals will be ramped up to ensure that they have full 24-hour services, diagnostic services, so that people can be seen as quickly as possible. Cities that are much bigger than Winnipeg, including Vancouver and Calgary, have far fewer emergency rooms and yet their wait times are far less. You're better to have three emergency rooms that are operating properly and full-time with full diagnostics than having six that aren't working well."

Goertzen expects it will take about two years to complete this changeover. He adds the primary reason for the transformation is to improve service to patients but says the streamlined system should also lead to significant cost savings in the future.

"My mandate, as the Minister of Health that was given to me by the Premier, was to both make the health care system sustainable but also to make it better. We believe this will do both. We don't have a strict calculation on the savings that will be provided, in terms of streamlining and having better efficiency within the system, but I'm sure it will be in the tens of millions of dollars over time. But the primary concern of this is delivering better care."

Under the plan, two urgent care centres, for cases that are serious but not life-threatening, will be located at the Seven Oaks and Victoria Hospitals.