The B.C. Radiological Society is sounding the alarm on increasing wait times for medical imaging in the province, warning the situation could worsen if private clinics are forced to close.
Dr. Charlotte Yong-Hing, the president of the B.C. Radiological Society told Global News that the clinics are owned by individual physicians who are paid through MSP.
“They do a huge amount of the imaging in B.C.,” Yong-Hing said. “They do over 50 per cent of all the outpatient imaging, such as X-ray, ultrasound mammography, and they do over 60 per cent of all the breast imaging.”
Yong-Hing said the clinics are now facing huge increases in their overhead costs, putting financial pressure on the owners and potentially having to cut back on services.
“They have had an over 25 per cent increase in their overhead cost, but there has only been an increase of five per cent in the fees,” she said. “So they are having to pay the rest of that, pay the difference. So almost 20 per cent increase in costs they have to pay. So these financial pressures are increasing and these clinics are finding that it’s becoming unsustainable.”
Yong-Hing said the biggest cost is the technical component of running the imaging clinics.
“There are extensive technical costs for community imaging clinics, equipment, the medical imaging technologist, the admin staff… the rents, image storage and retrieval supplies,” she added. “There’s some specific overhead costs that are very particular to medical imaging and are more than for other specialties.”
She said many of the clinics have reached out to the provincial government to let them know that the situation is becoming unsustainable and many are already reducing services, leading to longer wait times for patients.
“They were long in the fall. They’re even longer now. And if the community imaging clinics were to close, even if one community imaging clinic was to close, the effect would be significant.”
Yong-Hing said the B.C. Radiological Society has sent three letters to the Ministry of Health, they have already met with Dix and sent a letter in January warning that the community clinics are at risk of closing. She said they received a reply a few weeks ago but it did not address the clinics at all.
“We’re already seeing impact there,” she said. “They have had to reduce services. They sometimes have to close or there are fewer appointments per day. And the wait times now have gone up to six to nine months for some breast imaging in B.C.”
She added that there is a huge risk of clinics closing as people retire and no one wants to continue the practice. This would mean wait times for breast imaging would increase even further.
“Well, we are asking for emergency overhead support for the community imaging clinics, similar to what the family physicians received. We need to figure out a plan, a sustained plan so that these clinics can keep operating.”
On Wednesday, Dix said B.C.’s radiology record is the best in North America with the recent increase from 174,000 publically funded MRIs a year to more than 300,000.
“The priority in this area has been enormous and the work for radiologists has increased significantly with respect to clinics, what you call community clinics or private clinics,” he said.
Dix added that the province will be meeting with the Radiological Society soon.
“There are 17 more publicly funded MRI machines than when I became minister of health,” he said.
“And while you may say that’s the public system, it’s true that work is of course done generally on fee for service by radiologists, for example, equally on cancer, equally on CT scans. So this has been an area of massive investment by government and we’re now in many areas of that first in the country and we were towards the last in the country when I took over.”
Yong-Hing hopes that more help is coming as she said the situation could not be more dire.
“This is a crisis and that urgent action is needed now.”
Comments