Patients wait for MRI scans

Staff recruitment struggles are contributing to hundreds of southern patients not receiving MRI scans within the targeted wait times.

Southern District Health Board chief executive Chris Fleming said the Ministry of Health target was for 85 per cent of outpatient referrals to receive their scans and reports within 42 days.

However, a report to the SDHB commissioner’s meeting yesterday says the percentage of patients to get MRI scans within 42 days has been no higher than 44 per cent in each of the five months between January and May. The DHB scanned 3081 patients in the six months to June 30, with 1948 scanned in Dunedin Hospital and 1133 in Southland Hospital.

Reasons for the low rate of scans were two-fold, Fleming said.

The DHB replaced the single MRI scanner at Dunedin Hospital between November 2016 and January 2017, undergoing a full outage for five weeks which restricted the number of scans that could be performed elsewhere.

And at Southland Hospital, a number of MRI trained technologists left the DHB and there had been ‘‘limited recruitment success’’.

Therefore Southland Hospital also has reduced capacity for nonurgent scans to be completed.

There had been a 10 per cent year-on-year increase in demand for MRI scans, with the DHB looking at how to manage the increasing demand.

The DHB had a number of strategies to manage the wait times, Fleming said.

These include providing MRI technologist locum cover in Southland and getting trained MRI technologists from Dunedin to provide cover in Southland.

Two MRI trainee positions had been implemented in Southland while additional weekend clinics were being held in Dunedin.

Fleming said the wait time target did not include patients that were referred from the Emergency Department, inpatient services, or patients who were scanned at set intervals for surveillance purposes.

The DHB was experiencing an increasing demand for urgent and surveillance MRI referrals.

All urgent referrals were scanned in the appropriate timeframe, he said. In November, it was revealed at a commissioner’s meeting that Southlanders had to wait a ‘‘completely unacceptable’’ eight months for an ultrasound at Southland Hospital.