Nearly a hundred MRI patients had their appointments cancelled at Victoria Hospital

Staffing issues and an equipment failure at Victoria Hospital led to nearly 100 cancelled magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) appointments during the first two weeks of July.

Ten patients had their appointments cancelled on July 1 due to a lack of staff, with an additional 86 appointments cancelled on July 7 when a cooling unit on an MRI machine malfunctioned. 

According to a government agency tracking the average wait times across the province, patients booked for an MRI in London expected to wait an average of 24 to 248 days, depending on the severity of the patient's condition. 

The London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) said it is hiring more staff and is bringing in a 5th MRI machine for Victoria Hospital in an effort to shorten wait times, said John French, the corporate executive for diagnostics at the LHSC.

"We try and operate our MRI machines 24/7, but unfortunately, we do have human resources challenges, which we are currently trying to address. We're doing so by training eight additional MRI technologists who will be available around September," he said.

He said that one of the challenges is that the jobs require significant training.

"We really do feel for patients that have to wait for our MRI appointments and the last thing we want to do is to postpone our appointments, but what we endeavour to do is reschedule those appointments as soon as practically possible."

The health care system across the country is struggling with staffing challenges for MRI technologists and radiologists, with fewer people going into the field, said Dr. Ania Kielar, the President of the Canadian Association of Radiologists.

"We don't have enough equipment, we don't have enough technologists to run them, and the technologists we have are being burned out," she said.

She said that Canada has fewer MRIs in their hospitals per capita than many other western nation countries.

"The equipment that we have is being run almost 24 hours a day in most places, so technologists are being asked to work more hours to get as many patients imaged as we can," said Kielar.

The lack of equipment and new hires is part of the reason why there are such long wait time is across the province, she said.

"You can't have chemotherapy if you have cancer without knowing if it's getting better or worse, and all of that generally requires some sort of imaging," said Kielar.

She added this is putting further strain on more than just the health care system because the longer patients have to wait, the sicker they get.