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That’s one way for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority to give the appearance that hospitals are reducing emergency room wait times: just stop reporting wait times altogether.

That’s what the WRHA has done for its 2016-17 annual report, which was released online Friday.

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For the past several years the WRHA has published benchmark statistics showing various categories of ER wait times and how they compared to previous years. It allowed readers to track from year to year how long patients were waiting for treatment, including the percentage of patients admitted to hospital who got a medical bed within eight hours, one of the key measurements of ER overcrowding.

But in its 2016-17 annual report – the first full-year report released under the Pallister government – the WRHA has eliminated all ER wait time data and offered no explanation in the document as to why.

When asked why no ER wait time data was included in the annual report, WRHA spokesperson Anne Bennett would only say the WRHA has changed how it measures wait times and confirmed it would no longer publish the benchmark data it used to.