PURCHASE OF MRI CLINICS MEANS MORE SURGERIES
Extra funds will then be needed to reduce growing waiting list
Health Minister Adrian Dix reduced some of the privatesector presence in the healthcare system this week, buying out two private MRI clinics and hinting that the NDP government might be in the market to purchase more of them.
Dix declined to disclose what the province paid for a clinic in Surrey and another in Abbotsford, pleading “commercial reasons” and not denying he was protecting the bargaining position for similar takeovers in the future.
The health minister framed the purchase as part of a drive to reduce waiting lists for MRIs, a major bottleneck in access to health care and one where B.C. trails behind the national average.
He bought the two clinics because it was cheaper than developing them from scratch in a region, Fraser Health, that has the longest waiting times for MRI diagnostics in the province.
“This region has a growing population and fewer MRIs per population than just about anywhere else in Canada,” said Dix, who was flanked as he made the announcement Monday by the NDP-appointed chairman of the health region, former B.C. Federation of Labour president Jim Sinclair.
“This purchase will include clinic staff becoming health authority employees and Fraser Health assuming assets and infrastructure. These clinics will start seeing patients within a month.”
Part and parcel of the takeover is a commitment to increase operating hours. The New Democrats already poured $11 million into that initiative this year, boosting the number of clinics performing MRIs on a roundthe-clock basis and funding 37,000 additional procedures overall. The newly acquired clinics in Fraser Health will be doing another 1,000 procedures each in the current fiscal year and another 5,000 apiece starting April 1.
The move is tied to the NDP crackdown on the previous B.C. Liberal government’s tacit acceptance of extra billing and queue jumping via private surgical and diagnostic clinics.
The New Democrats initially imposed an outright ban on all such procedures starting Oct. 1. Then it granted a six-month extension to the MRI clinics alone to allow them more transition time to help clear the backlog.
Dix has said the crackdown was prompted by a federal government audit of extra billing in B.C., which resulted in the province being fined $16 million for violations dating back to the previous B.C. Liberal government.
“It’s not just because we’re being fined,” he told Rob Shaw, of Postmedia News. “I don’t want to say the federal government is making us do all these things. I believe in it too.”
Believe it he does. As party leader, Dix once threatened to ban doctors from working in both the public and the private system.
For all his inclination to rein in the private presence in the public system, that is not high in his mandate as minister of health.
Rather, Premier John Horgan directed him to focus on “reducing health-care waiting times” and “implementing provincewide co-ordination to manage and actively monitor waiting lists.”
For now, says Dix, private clinics can remain in business, taking pressure off the public system by performing selected procedures on contract to the health regions.
“A lot of the private surgical centres right now — a huge part of their business is us,” he said. “The only thing I’m asking of them is to obey the law, which is not to extra bill.”
Still, I expect some private operators are sensing a more chilly climate under the NDP.
Last month Postmedia News health reporter Pamela Fayerman reported on how the Vancouver Coastal Health region was severing its connection to the private False Creek Health Care clinic. Last year the region contracted the clinic for almost $2 million worth of work.
Just last week, Dix announced that the New Democrats were scrapping the planned public-private partnership (P3) for the next two phases of the $1.35-billion makeover of Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster.
Though the $259-million first phase was on budget and on schedule, according to the recent financial update, the P3 concept was about as warmly regarded in NDP circles as landlords and property developers.
Owners of private clinics might conclude that if someone with as much power over the system as the minister of health is looking to buy, then it is time to sell.
But for all that Dix is focused on reducing the waiting time for MRIs, the effort could entail major financial consequences down the road.
MRIs are only one of the bottlenecks in a health-care system where waiting (whether the politicians admit it or not) is part of rationing and cost containment.
If more patients get MRIs sooner, then more will also be diagnosed with conditions needing surgery — and they will then be put on the waiting list for that.
Dix was able to fund 37,000 additional MRIs this year for $11 million, which works out to about $300 apiece.
By comparison, his April initiative to fund 9,400 additional surgeries was budgeted at $75 million, about $8,000 apiece.
With an estimated 85,000 British Columbians already standing in line for one kind of surgery or another, Dix will need to rustle up a larger boost to the health-care budget to seriously reduce that waiting list.
But as one who knows the health-care system put it this week, for now the minister is not eliminating the choke point, only moving it along the line.
MRIs are only one of the bottlenecks in a health-care system where waiting is part of rationing and cost containment.