Each area draws on the other's resources, giving Toronto and the GTA a total of 17 MRIs, or one per 272,000 adults. The district of Hamilton-Wentworth has one scanner now, and a second is expected to be operating by the end of February. A third machine should be operating by the end of the year, and a fourth machine has also been approved by the Health Ministry as part of a provincewide expansion of MRI services. A fifth MRI has been approved for research purposes. Ministry of Health spokesman Jeff Bell says the Hamilton hospitals serve a larger area.
Money can give Ottawa residents closer, and faster, access to a scan.
The Ottawa Valley MRI clinic in Hull began accepting patients in early December. The closest publicly funded MRI machine to Ottawa is in Kingston, which has about a five-month waiting list, Mr. Holland says. Last year, the hospital scanned about 15,000 patients at both sites combined. And he and others worry that demand will only surge as the population ages, since older people are considerably more likely to require MRI scans than are younger people. Ottawa's over-75 population is expected to increase by 27 per cent by 2004.