Private MRIs not reducing wait times, auditor says

Saskatchewan’s use of private MRI scans is not reducing wait lists for the service, according to the provincial auditor.

Wait times for MRIs actually went up slightly from March 2016 to the end of December, said Judy Ferguson, who tabled Volume 1 of her 2017 report Tuesday.

“It hasn’t decreased the wait list, but it’s early stages,” she said, noting the one-for-one model had only been in place nine months before the audit for her annual report was done.

Ferguson also said it is taking up resources of the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region (RQHR) to manage MRIs, because private sector scan information is often entered manually. The province’s law allows for-profit clinics to charge people for MRI scans if those clinics also provide a scan to someone on the public waiting list.

RQHR runs two MRI machines and contracts two private MRI operators to provide 5,560 scans annually.

Its goal is to serve 15,500 MRI patients a year, but in 2016 it only served 11,981 patients.

At the end of 2016, there were 2,610 patients waiting for an MRI, with more than half of those patients expecting a scan within 30 days.

On average, they had to wait 76 days.

To reduce those wait times, Ferguson recommended the RQHR — soon to be folded into the province’s single health authority — track key data about its MRI services in order to determine causes of the wait times. She also said more can be done to monitor the quality of private MRI operators.

Mark Wyatt, a deputy minister in the Health Ministry, said the RQHR could do a better job of analyzing information it already has in its system to better understand wait times.

He also defended the use of private MRIs in Saskatchewan.

“The introduction of the private pay MRI has added an additional roughly 2,500 scans that have been done in Regina Qu’Appelle,” he said. “It has certainly increased the capacity, and without those scans, I would say the wait times would be longer than they are. Quite clearly that capacity has assisted.”

Ferguson also raised concern over how the province detects inappropriate payments to physicians. Each year, over $500 million is paid to roughly 1,800 physicians under a fee-for-service agreement. The auditor said the system being used to detect overpayments — often caused by physician related administrative errors — is outdated and requires significant manual

Without those scans, I would say the wait times would be longer than they are.

assessments.

She pointed out that the body responsible for investigating questionable billing practices only looks at nine physicians each year, even though in March 2017 there were 15 suspected of having questionable practices. Further, her office’s data analysis showed up to 78 physicians with questionable billing practices.