Unfortunately for that argument, overcrowding incidents go back to before bed closures began. Yet, they tell much the same story from a time when there were over 700 more beds in the Winnipeg hospital system than there are now. In short, regardless of the number of beds in the system, seasonal overcrowding persists. It seems the cause of the problem lies elsewhere. This report does not look at emergency departments specifically, but at the larger problem of hospital overcrowding.
Patients end up on stretchers in hallways of overcrowded ERs when all available beds are occupied.
So we looked at seasonal patterns of use for Winnipeg's seven acute care hospitals over the last 11 years to find out how often hospitals are full, and why. In each year, we tracked the number of patients in hospital or admitted to hospital each day. We call this norm the census range. Small rises above census range the system can handle. These occurrences we call high pressure periods.