MRI machines coming to Ontario, but will there be staff to operate them?

The closed sign has been hung outside the Wingham and District Hospital’s Emergency Room, more than they’d like this past year.

So, when the local MPP shows up with big cheque for a new piece of vital equipment it’s something to celebrate.

“Healthcare, for the past two and a half years, has had a series of challenges. Occasionally bad news, occasionally very bad news. This is not just good news, it’s great news,” says Wingham and District Hospital CEO, Karl Ellis.

Wingham’s hospital is getting a new MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machine. As are hospitals in Goderich, Kincardine, Palmerston, and Collingwood. Twenty-seven hospitals, mostly in rural Ontario, are receiving $20 million to operate MRI machines.

“Out of the 27 machines that are coming out to rural Ontario, three are coming right here to Huron-Bruce,” says Huron-Bruce MPP Lisa Thompson.

The diagnostic tool is almost a necessary tool in a hospital these days, delving deeper than ultrasounds and x-rays.

The new MRI machines, which must still be purchased by the hospitals, are expected to lower Ontario’s MRI wait times, from 77 days, closer to the targeted 28 days. This is all contingent on the training of new MRI technologist, of course.

“Absolutely with the number of MRI’s the province is announcing currently, there will be a challenge in training, getting MRI techs up and working,” says Ellis.

There is time. Ellis suggests it will be a late 2023 or early 2024 before Wingham’s MRI machine will be up and running, but that time must be used wisely, he says. To ensure, their shiny new machine doesn’t sit idle due to staffing shortages that have plagued many other parts of rural healthcare.

“It’s going to take us a year, year and a half, to buy the equipment and renovate the space. So, in that time we have to be working at training MRI techs within the province,” he says.

While the Ministry of Health has no specific training funding tied to this announcement, they say they are spending millions of dollars to hire an additional 19,000 healthcare workers in the province.