Patients needing an MRI will have easier access next Spring as the province announced the building of a second MRI machine at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital (NRGH).
B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix was on hand for the announcement and says the addition of the second machine will help with soaring numbers of MRI scans the province is seeing.
The province says Island Health performed 28 per cent more MRI exams in 2018-19 compared to the previous year, with 11,264 of those at NGRH.
That’s a jump of nearly 2,000 exams at NGRH compared to the year before.
The project to have a second MRI unit is at a cost of $5.5 million, with $3.3 million from the provincial government and $2.2 million from the Nanaimo Regional Hospital District.
The province says wait times decreased at NGRH in 2018-19 since providing MRIs around the clock in the last year.
In the 50th percentile, waits decreased from 70 to 34 days and in the 90th percentile, wait times went down from 166 days to 76.
According to a provincial release, Island Health is expected to perform about 50,000 MRI exams in 2019-20.
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