The B.C. government has announced a four-year plan to boost the number of MRIs performed each year by 65,000, in an effort to cut wait times.
B.C. Premier Christy Clark and Health Minister Terry Lake said the strategy recognizes that access to the medical scans — used to examine everything from brain tumours, prostate and breast cancers, to heart conditions and joint problems — has been a challenge.
“There are long wait-lists — I would argue unacceptably long wait-lists, in some cases — for MRIs across the province,” Clark said at a news conference at Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria.
“We need to make investments in making sure we shorten those wait-lists,” she said. “That’s one of the dividends British Columbians can see as part of a strong and growing economy.”
Lake said 90 per cent of people wait up to 256 days for an MRI.
The province’s strategy focuses on increasing operating time of MRI machines by adding more radiologists, nurses and technicians to perform the scans and possibly contracting out the services. It plans to add up to 65,000 MRIs a year, at a cost of up to $20 million annually, by year four.
Each of B.C.’s health authorities is devising its own plan and has committed to increasing the number of MRI exams by 45 per cent a year over four years.
Island Health hopes to complete 12,803 additional exams within the that period.
One the Island, MRIs are performed at Nanaimo Regional General, Royal Jubilee, Victoria General, and through the mobile MRI at Campbell River, St. Joseph’s , Cowichan District and West Coast General.
As of Oct. 8, there were 12,679 people waiting for an MRI on Vancouver Island, according to the health authority.
Between mid-August and mid-October, the median wait for completed routine MRIs was 230 days, said Island Health spokeswoman Suzanne Germain. Waits for patients at Royal Jubilee Hospital were 132 days during this period, and ranged to 366 days for mobile MRI patients at Cowichan District Hospital, she said.
Lake expects the health authorities to increase the scans being performed before Christmas.
“People should notice this very soon,” Lake said. “We should have acted sooner, to be honest, but we have to manage our budgets and as the premier said, when the province is doing well economically/fiscally, then we have the opportunity to look at the challenges we have in each ministry and address them.”
Some scans will be scheduled for evening and night-time hours, the province said.
MRI scans are already performed on weekends and evenings at Victoria General and Royal Jubilee, but many time slots remain open, said Dr. Stuart Silver, acting medical director for Island Health’s medical imaging services.
Silver called the announcement to reduce wait times “fantastic.”
“It’s going to make a big difference to a lot of our patients,” he said. However, training enough MRI technologists could be a problem, said Yves Gagnon, Royal Jubilee’s head MRI technician.
There is a shortage of people to fill the positions and training takes almost two years, he said.
Silver agreed. “It would be wonderful if the province recognized there is a shortage that will be exacerbated by this and train more,” he said. “Right now it’s expensive to train techs. … It’s going to be challenging.”
