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Friesen had no clear answers when asked to explain how the breakdown occurred. And when asked what’s being done to prevent it from happening again, the minister only gave vague answers.

“I can tell you today that this government has shored up the work streams and shored up the leadership that is leading these changes,” he said. “It means that where we see that there’s a better process needed we will do it, where we see that there’s better communication needed we will insist that it be there.”

What shoring up the leadership means is anyone’s guess. But so far, it doesn’t appear to mean changes will be made within senior management, at least none they’re making public.

All we know so far is government has decided to hand over the hospital consolidation planning process to Shared Health, a new bureaucracy created by the Tories that’s supposed to coordinate health services provincewide. Shared Health will now take over “management of system planning going forward,” as urged by Dr. David Peachey, the Nova Scotia consultant who recommended the hospital consolidation changes and who was brought back a few weeks ago to figure out why things have gone off the rails.

“Shared Health will be asked to expedite a needs assessment of the Winnipeg health region to carefully monitor progress, flag areas of change that require a greater level of attention and implement control measures to ensure plans stay on track,” a May 16 government news release says.

So two years into these changes and no one has done a “needs assessment” or implemented “control measures” to guide the changes?

In the meantime, ER wait times have been climbing for the past 18 months and wait times for surgeries such as hip and knee replacement and cataracts are also on the rise.

Friesen said evidence from other jurisdictions shows that when you “get these changes right” wait times fall and patients get better care. Unfortunately, they still haven’t figured out how to get it right.