Only 42% of MRIs hit target time

Wait times for MRI scans in the Champlain region remain far above the province’s target for non-urgent patients, updated performance indicators show.

A report presented this week to the Champlain Local Health Integration Network’s board showed that just 42 per of MRI scans done between April 1 and June 30 were performed within the province’s 28day target for 90 per cent of nonurgent patients.

While that’s six percentage points better than in the first three months of 2016, the improvement was largely due to additional onetime funding from the LHIN, the regional health planning body, early this year.

That allowed technicians to operate the region’s 12 MRI machines for more hours, reducing the wait time for everyone, said Chantale LeClerc, CEO of the Champlain LHIN. However, she added, “We don’t know if we’ll be able to sustain that or if it was just a blip.”

LeClerc said the LHIN is working on some “bigger strategies” to reduce MRI wait times, outlined last spring by Jack Kitts, The Ottawa Hospital’s CEO.

Part of the strategy involves using “every single slot that might be available” on MRI machines, she said, including backfilling when there are cancellations and improving efficiency during night shifts.

The LHIN is also developing clinical protocols to give physicians guidance on when MRIs should be ordered.

It recently sent a letter to family doctors advising them that MRI scans aren’t necessary for patients who might need hip or knee replacements, LeClerc said. “There are other ways of diagnosing people that produce the same findings.”

As well, work is underway on a central intake system to distribute the more than 80,000 MRI scans done annually more evenly among the region’s hospitals. But it will operate manually, relying on faxes rather than the expensive electronic system the LHIN had hoped to use.

Work on those strategies is “still in the planning stages,” LeClerc said. By early 2017 “we may start to see some of the impact of that.”

Even so, reducing wait times for the least urgent MRI patients will be challenging without additional resources, Brian Schnarch, the LHIN’s director of system performance and analysis, told the board.

Part of the problem is that demand for MRI scans continues to grow, driven by an aging population and new treatment standards for some diseases.

“There are guidelines now that say MRIs for certain types of cancer need to be done on a more frequent basis,” said LeClerc.

One bright note in the performance update was a dramatic improvement in the time new Community Care Access Centre clients must wait for their first home care visit.

That improved by 29 percentage points, to 84 per cent of the provincial target from just 55 per cent in the first three months of the year.