Promised mobile MRI will travel between Thompson, The Pas: health minister

A mobile MRI promised for northern Manitoba will be ready to roll in May, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara says.

This year’s provincial budget included $3 million to staff the scanner on wheels in an effort to reduce wait times and allow people who need scans to get them closer to where they live.

Asagwara said the equipment and staff to operate it will travel between Thompson and The Pas.

“Surrounding communities will be able to access MRIs in the North, which is huge,” the health minister told the Free Press, adding that the region’s residents previously had to travel to Winnipeg for the diagnostic imaging.

”Anybody who would have needed an MRI previously would have had to leave their community, catch a flight, drive their vehicle, make arrangements for child care or leave work or make some pretty big personal sacrifices in order to get an MRI,” said Asagwara.

“We said that that was wrong, that the previous approach under the previous government was unacceptable.”

The mobile northern MRI was an NDP promise made during the 2023 election campaign.

The latest provincial data posted online in December showed 24,117 Manitobans were waiting for MRI scans.

Progressive Conservative MLA Jeff Bereza (Portage la Prairie) called out the province for ignoring his community’s pleas for an MRI after its hospital foundation raised $5 million in pledges.

“My question to the minister is, why aren’t we taking the Portage Hospital Foundation’s money and buying a mobile MRI?” Bereza asked.

He has lobbied the NDP government to incorporate an MRI unit into plans for the new hospital under construction, which is expected to open in 2026.

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Asagwara said the priority was to provide the diagnostic equipment in the North, where residents face far more significant challenges to get the tests, adding the cost associated with placing an MRI unit in a particular facility go beyond the purchase price and include the resources to operate it.

“Not only are we purchasing and doing the work of securing the MRI and getting it into the North, but we have taken steps to ensure it’s fully staffed,” the minister said.

The province is adding training seats to ensure more MRI technologists are trained in Manitoba, Asagwara said.

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The minister said a new collective agreement ratified last week with the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals — who were poised to strike — will help to attract MRI technologists and trainees.

The Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals says it has been a challenge to recruit MRI technologists.

“Manitoba has a really small pool to draw from,” said MAHCP president Jason Linklater, adding he’s heard that four new MRI positions have been created but the association hasn’t seen a staffing plan for the mobile northern unit.

MRI techs are eligible for a 15 per cent reassignment bonus “which is significant,” the association president said. There’s also a disruption allowance, reimbursement of travel expenses and a 15 per cent northern differential “which is new in this contract, as well.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.