Help on the way to ease 'unacceptable' MRI wait times, P.E.I. health minister says

A P.E.I. man who's been waiting for a medical test at Queen Elizabeth Hospital for months said he was able to get one in days through his specialist in New Brunswick. 

Even worse, Rene Provencher said he didn't even receive a call from the Charlottetown hospital to tell him the magnetic resonance angiography test, or MRA, he needed hadn't even been booked. 

Provencher has aneurysms in his neck that need to be monitored regularly by an MRA, which is a type of body scan similar to an MRI but which looks specifically at blood vessels. 

He said his neurologist in Moncton requested the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) book an MRA six months ago, but that never happened. 

"I found that horrific,"  Provencher told CBC News. "Most people will just wait for the phone call from the hospital … and that's not right for the patients that are waiting. 

"A lot of these situations could be life or death if they're not properly looked at [to see if there's] any progress or growth."

Health P.E.I. confirmed Thursday that patients in need of what it deems "routine" MRIs or MRAs are not currently being booked at the QEH because technologists staffing for the service is down by half.

The agency said two nuclear medicine specialists retired, resulting in two permanent MRI technologists moving into that department. 

As a result, until two new MRI technologists are hired, the hospital is only booking urgent and non-urgent patients, not routine ones like Provencher. 

The issue came up in the P.E.I. Legislature on Thursday when Summerside-Wilmot Progressive Conservative MLA Tyler DesRoches questioned Health Minister Mark McLane about the "ridiculously long" wait times for the scans. 

'It's just incomprehensible'

McLane acknowledged that waits for the scans being booked currently are unacceptable, and said the province will have two new MRI technologists starting next January.

In the meantime, he said, Health P.E.I. will fill those vacancies with technologists through a private temporary staffing firm.

"Our wait times are unacceptable," McLane said. "I do know urgent exams have [wait times] of two to four weeks; semi-urgent is not acceptable at seven to nine months.

"We need to improve that." 

For now, Provencher will have to travel to Moncton twice over the next two weeks to get his MRA, so physicians can determine if his aneurysms have grown. If they have, he'll go into surgery within days. 

While he's comforted to know he'll get the health care he needs off-Island, he hopes P.E.I.'s hospitals could communicate information better to their patients. 

"I found it appalling, the fact that there's people waiting for these MRAs or MRIs … and not being called to let them know they're not doing any bookings," he said. "In this day and age, it's just incomprehensible.

"We're talking about people's lives. I don't understand why there's not a plan in place to fix that problem."