Islanders paying out of pocket for private MRIs as waitlist climbs past 2 years

When Vicky Chaisson took her 13-year-old daughter to the doctor last fall hoping for a diagnosis for a recurring ankle injury, the doctor ordered an MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging scan.

"We couldn't figure out why she was still in pain when she walked. Her foot was swelling," said Chaisson. "She likes being active and she likes playing hockey, but hockey was a struggle and she's too stubborn to get off the ice when it hurts."

A month later, Chaisson was told her daughter faced a 17-month wait for the MRI. The next time she called, it was going to be 19 months.

So the single mother started saving up for a big outlay of cash: more than $1,400 to cover a scan at a private MRI clinic in Moncton, with gas and the Confederation Bridge toll factored in.

"It costs an arm and a leg, but I would get the results way faster than if I was to sit and wait for that call [from Health P.E.I.], which I still have not got from them," she said on Wednesday.

According to the most recent national data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, dating from 2023, P.E.I. had the second-longest MRI wait times in the country. Since then, the waitlist for Islanders has only gotten longer.

This week, Health P.E.I. told CBC News that the current wait time on the Island for a routine MRI is more than two years. The Canadian benchmark wait time for such a routine scan is 12 weeks.

For semi-urgent MRIs that use a dye injection to provide the detailed, high-contrast images required to detect things like small tumours, the wait is 46 weeks on the Island, versus the benchmark of eight weeks.

For the most urgent cases, Health P.E.I. said wait times are within the Canadian benchmark of two weeks.

The provincial health authority said in an email that it has been short two MRI technologists for most of 2024, "which has affected wait times."

As a stopgap, the province has hired technologists from a private agency — similar to the private-agency nurses P.E.I. and other provinces have been using to maintain staffing levels, sometimes referred to as travel nurses. 

Health P.E.I. said it has recruited two new permanent technologists who begin work in January, which will bring staffing numbers up to full capacity.

Until then, the statement said, Health P.E.I. "is exploring off-Island options to help bring down wait times."

In the meantime, it's clear a lot of P.E.I. residents have been exploring going off-Island themselves, and paying out of pocket to avoid lengthy wait times.