Some Manitobans wait 4 times as long for a CT scan because more people getting them: province

Posted on October 29, 2024 by Peggy

The median wait time for a CT scan at a pair of Winnipeg hospitals has quadrupled in one year’s time, but the health minister says the government is still moving in the right direction.

New provincial data shows the median wait for a CT scan at Health Sciences Centre, the city’s largest hospital, soared to 32 weeks in August 2024, the last month with publicly available data, from seven weeks in August 2023.

During that time, the median wait in weeks only hit the double-digits in June, when it reached 13 weeks. The median wait jumped again to 31 weeks the following month.

At Concordia Hospital, the median wait for a CT scan spiked to 25 weeks in August 2024 from six weeks a year earlier.

Waits haven’t been that long since the pandemic, Progressive Conservative health critic Kathleen Cook said during question period Monday.

“This surge is clearly a direct result of NDP mismanagement,” she said. “When will the minister of health take responsibility for the dangerous delays that have plagued diagnostic services under their watch?”

‘Blips’ in the data: health minister

Other hospitals experienced a smaller rise in median wait times, such as Seven Oaks, which saw a 9-week increase from August 2023 to August 2024, while facilities including Grace Hospital and the Children’s Hospital saw small decreases.

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara described some of the increases Tuesday as “blips” in the data.

Asagwara said more CT scans are being performed year-over-year, which has the effect of “creating more space” for additional patients to get onto the waitlist.

“What we’re concerned about is: Are we moving overall in the right direction? Are we doing more CTs? Yes, we are.

“Are more Manitobans getting access to the care that they need? Yes, they are getting access to the care they need, and more of them.”

The province conducted 26,321 CT scans at facilities across Manitoba in August of this year, a 3.3 per cent increase from the 25,470 cases performed the prior August, according to provincial data.

Cook called that a “marginal increase” that “does not justify the huge jumps in CT scan wait times,” she said in an interview Tuesday.

Asagwara’s explanation “says to me that the minister doesn’t actually know why wait times have increased the way that they have,” Cook said.

Government spokesperson Emily Coutts said many of the CT scans performed in the summer are prominent because of the seasonal spike in trauma cases.

The remaining CT scans done in the summer prioritized those patients who have been waiting the longest for surgery, Coutts said.

Health-care staff in Winnipeg have started focusing on the people waiting the longest due to a new information management system that targets where patients are in their wait for a procedure.