1,000 CUH patients wait 9 months for MRI scan

More than 1,000 patients are waiting nine months for a routine MRI scan at Cork University Hospital, a situation exacerbated by the transfer of additional acute services to CUH from other hospitals in the region.

CUH group chief executive Tony McNamara said the closure of the emergency department at South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital and an increase in the number of specialist consultants at CUH had also had a bearing on the increase in demand for MRI imaging. This was particularly true of areas such as neurology, cancer tumours and the symptomatic breast service, said Mr McNamara.

The nine-month wait is an increase on the average wait of 200 days recorded in 2010 at CUH and criticised at the time by the HSE’s HealthStat performance monitoring unit.

The delay in accessing an MRI scan was raised at the HSE South regional health forum yesterday by Fine Gael Cork City Councillor John Buttimer, who asked what strategies were in place to reduce waiting times.

Since 1995, the hospital has paid a private company, Scancor Ltd, which includes members of CUH’s own consultant staff, to provide an MRI service for public patients at a cost of up to €1m a year.

Mr McNamara said they had now secured capital programme funding for a publicly owned service. He said it would be built and staffed by the provider and will include a 3 Tesla MRI unit, which gives increased image clarity, and that tenders were being evaluated.

“We hope to award the tender in the next month or two,” he said.

Mr McNamara said the demand for the service was “quite phenomenal” and they were “very keen” to get it in place as soon as possible.

He confirmed that Scancor Ltd was “free to tender for this as well”.

Last year, the hospital paid Scancor €700,000 for the service.

In addition, CUH is developing a business case to support the purchase of a second unit, which Mr McNamara said would “future proof the requirement for MRI diagnostic imaging in CUH for the foreseeable future”.

CUH receives an average of 82 referrals per week for public patients, while the budget allocation for the MRI service facilitates the scanning of just 70.

According to Mr McNamara, the 3 Tesla unit has the capacity to deliver additional access to MRI scanning, within the current budget allocation.

In December, CUH introduced a waiting list initiative to reduce both the number of patients on the waiting list and waiting times for patients referred for an MRI scan. Three companies were contracted to support this and as of March 14, a total of 1,590 extra patients had an MRI scan.

Mr McNamara said the initiative is set to continue until mid-April, by which stage referrals received up to July 2013 will have been scanned, with an average waiting time of eight months for public patients.