Strategy ‘dramatically exceeds’ target for more MRI exams in B.C.: minister

VICTORIA – Almost 44,000 more specialized diagnostic exams have been completed across British Columbia in the first year of a new health care strategy and Health Minister Adrian Dix says that amounts to an “extraordinary achievement.”

The B.C. Surgical and Diagnostic Imaging Strategy includes a provision to operate magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, machines around the clock, with more than 233,000 exams done in the first year of the initiative.

When compared with the year before, Dix says their strategy “dramatically exceeded” the initial target of 37,000 scans.
MRI scans are vital to the diagnosis of soft tissue damage such as brain tumours, strokes or dementia and past wait times have extended a year or more.

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The focus was on areas like Fraser Health and the North where the waits were worst.

“Vancouver Coastal Health with fewer people used to have 2500 more MRIs. We’ve obviously closed that gap by raising the number of MRIs in Fraser Health more than Vancouver Coastal Health,” says Dix.

While the minister didn’t have figures on how this has reduced the delays, preliminary data from Northern Health shows certain wait times dropped to 29 days from 57.

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“So that you get the care you need when you need it,” Dix adds, noting Burnaby waits for moderate need patients dropped from 90 days to 30, while St. Paul’s wait times dropped from 40 days to two.

“Pretty impressive and building on that this year with another year of increase we’re going to see wait time numbers come down significantly again.”

Dix says two private MRI outpatient clinics were purchased by Fraser Health as part of the strategy and the model could be applied to efforts to cut other health care wait times.