Private U.S. clinics lure Manitobans facing long MRI, diagnostic service waits
Patient volumes slowly ramping up to pre-pandemic levels, says North Dakota medical centre
Private clinics in the U.S. are marketing their services to Manitobans facing long wait times for MRIs and other imaging and diagnostic services in the province.
The Unity Medical Center in Grafton, N.D. — just over a two-hour drive from Winnipeg — says it receives between 15 and 20 Canadian patients every month.
"They're just coming down because they can't get into Canadian doctors on a timely manner when they're in so much pain," said radiology services supervisor Jess Tanke.
"We can usually get them in within two weeks for an MRI, at the latest."
For other services, the medical centre "can usually get them in within the same week, if not the next day," said Tanke.
CEO Alan O'Neil says the number of patients has been steadily building up to volumes seen before the COVID-19 pandemic, which temporarily shut down non-essential cross-border traffic.
O'Neil said the centre has been ramping up social media marketing to advertise its services north of the border.
A bit further south, the Grand Forks Clinic has been sending out mailers to Winnipeggers advertising the opportunity to get an "MRI in days, not months."
"I don't think the demand is going to go away," O'Neil said.
"I think you'll find it's fairly frequent towns that are close to the Canadian border probably do get some Canadians coming down for this type of thing.… It's just going to happen because of the demand."
Longer wait times
Wait times for the province's 14 MRI scanners ranged from about eight weeks in Brandon and Dauphin to more than 11 months for adults at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre as of June, according to provincial data. Annual median wait times have gone up from 13 weeks two years ago to 21 weeks this year.
Median wait times for CT scans have also gone up from five weeks in 2022 to eight this year. The median wait for ultrasounds was also eight weeks in 2024.
Most Canadian patients looking for MRIs at Unity Medical in North Dakota are suffering from some joint, muscle or ligament injury, Tanke said. For CT scans, it's usually people dealing with abdominal pain or who are staging cancer, she said.
A page for Canadian patients on Unity's website advertises MRI scan prices beginning at slightly over $2,000 US (just over $2,700 Cdn).
CT scans range from $1,000 to just over $4,000 US (about $1,360 to just over $5,400 Cdn).
Dayna McTaggart, the Manitoba manager for the Canadian Association of Medical Radiation Technologists, said that an increase in the number of urgent patients has led to delays all across the system, with those waiting left "living in pain."
"We've been hearing about … patients going to other provinces within Canada. So it's not surprising that they're considering options to go to the United States," she said.
'We should have the means': association
McTaggart added that while the situation helps the Canadian public system by removing people with financial means to go elsewhere from the queue, "it shouldn't be necessary."
"We should have the means in our province to image the patients we have," she said.
"I think that this situation where the United States may be capitalizing or marketing this to Canadian patients just further emphasizes the overall shortages within the health-care system."
Late last year, the NDP government shut down a task force created by the previous Progressive Conservative government meant to cut backlogs on surgeries and diagnostic procedures.
The NDP argued the task force was inefficient, and while in opposition had regularly accused it of prioritizing private health-care over the public system.
"When the previous government spent years putting more effort into sending people away for health care than fixing care in our own province and violated the Canada Health Act, making Manitobans pay out of pocket for diagnostics, it makes sense that a private, for-profit American clinic would try to take advantage of the situation," Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said in a statement Friday.
The government previously said the money that was being spent on the task force will be directed to other initiatives, like a northern mobile MRI unit.
McTaggart said that was a step in the right direction, but more is needed to address backlogs, including more work to tackle a shortage of technologists.
"That infrastructure is useless without the people to operate it," she said. "We need to ensure that there is adequate … flow-through of entry-level technologists to fill those gaps as well."
Asagwara said in the statement the government is also making progress on a commitment to hire more lab techs and other health-care professionals, so people can get the diagnostics they need in the province.
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