400% More Ontario Patients Dying While Awaiting CT and MRI Scans: Report

An image of a patient’s brain is displayed on a monitor screen as she lies in a MRI machine at Toronto's Sunnybrook Hospital on May 1, 2018. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press)

Ontario has seen a 400 percent increase since 2015 in the number of patients who have died waiting for medical scans to diagnose their illnesses, according to a new report by SecondStreet.org.

The report also found a 24.7 percent increase since 2018 in patients dying while on surgical wait lists nationwide. These findings follow a Fraser Institute report published earlier this month showing wait times for specialists and surgery in Canada are the longest in nearly 30 years.

SecondStreet.org collected the data through Freedom of Information requests and published its findings Dec. 13. It found some provinces—such as Nova Scotia—are comprehensive in collecting wait-time data, while others—such as Alberta—collect very little or none at all.

“How can governments fix this problem if they’re not even looking into it?” said SecondStreet.org President Colin Craig in a release. “The first step is to start tracking the problem, then put in place solutions.”

At least 13,581 patients died while waiting for surgeries, procedures, and diagnostic scans in 2021–22, SecondStreet.org said. That’s up from 11,581 last year. More than 10,000 of the deaths this past year were people waiting for diagnostic scans.

The report said the deaths fall into two categories: one is people who died because they did not receive the needed treatment or diagnosis; the other is people who died of other conditions while awaiting diagnosis or treatment for non-life-threatening conditions.

Although the latter group did not die because of the delay, their quality of life in their final days may have been impacted, said the report. SecondStreet.org said governments should take more care in reporting wait time deaths so the two groups could be more easily differentiated upon analysis.

CT and MRI Scan Wait Times

Most Canadians waited about 66 days for a CT scan, according to the most recent data collected and analyzed by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), for the period of April to October 2021. The longest wait time was in Nova Scotia, at 121 days. The shortest was in Ontario, at 41 days. Three provinces had no data available.

CIHI shows a 147-day wait time for MRIs nationwide. The longest again was Nova Scotia, with 284 days. The shortest again was Ontario, with 111 days.

The Canadian Association of Radiologists (CAR) published a report in November titled “Improving Access to Lifesaving Imaging Care for Canadians.” It said: “Before the pandemic, Canadians were waiting an average of 50 to 82 days for CT scans and up to 89 days for MRI imaging. This is 20 to 52 days longer than the recommended 30-day wait time for these potentially lifesaving modalities. During COVID, waitlists lengthened, creating ominous circumstances for people needing cancer screening, or patients requiring image-guided therapies or ongoing management of their disease.”

A Pre-Pandemic Problem

SecondStreet.org said: “COVID-19 has likely exacerbated the problem, but data suggests that waiting list deaths were on the rise prior to the arrival of the pandemic. Note that data from Ontario Health shows a 323% increase in patients dying while waiting for CT scans between 2015–16 and 2018–19. This period is entirely prior to COVID. During the same period, MRI scan waiting list deaths grew 243%.”

CIHI reported that median wait times for these scans at a national level were actually shorter by 4 to 5 days than before the pandemic. This varied widely, however, from province to province. Wait times were much longer in Nova Scotia and Manitoba and much shorter in Prince Edward Island and Ontario.

CAR said that “access to medical imaging ... before the pandemic was challenging and has significantly worsened.”

A shortage of both equipment and personnel are contributing to the problem, CAR said. It said there is a 72 percent emotional burnout rate for Canadian radiologists.

Solutions

CAR recommended an investment in new imaging technologies that increase capacity and efficiency. For example, voice dictation software could decrease the administrative burden on radiologists, it said.

Creating central repositories of imaging results could also cut down on duplication of examinations, it said. And making sure medical practitioners have better access to referral guidelines could prevent them from referring patients who don’t need imaging and cut wait times for more urgent cases.

The federal health agency told The Epoch Times via email that it invested $2 billion in March to help clear surgery backlogs. It also created a Coalition for Action for Health Workers in November to come up with recommendations on how to retain and increase the supply of health care workers.

“Provinces and territories are taking actions to increase health care training capacity, accelerate the integration of internationally educated health professionals, and improve workplace conditions in order to minimize wait times,” the agency’s statement said.