Two techs hired for new St. Boniface ER as CT-scan wait times soar

Wait times for CT scans at St. Boniface Hospital have soared, just as the central-Winnipeg facility prepares to open a diagnostics lab in its soon-to-be-unveiled redeveloped emergency department.

The project is expected to triple the size of the emergency department; a CT scanner and X-ray machines have been installed to provide testing on site.

Shared Health has provided funding to staff the equivalent of nearly three additional full-time positions to operate the new diagnostics suite. On Wednesday, it said two of the three positions had been filled, and that interviews are being held for the third.

“The fact that the government has funded new positions, and that Shared Health is filling those positions, is good news,” said Jason Linklater, president of the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals. “Too often, new beds or capacity is added without considering the increased demands on diagnostics staff,” he said in an email Wednesday.

“However, there are a limited number of CT and X-ray technologists in Manitoba, so I do wonder where those hires are coming from, and if Shared Health is robbing Peter to pay Paul and causing shortages elsewhere,” said Linklater.

The latest figures provided by the Manitoba government showed 20,713 Manitobans were waiting for a CT scan as of June 2025 — a number greater than during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic backlog.

While Manitoba’s overall annual median wait time for CT scans has dropped from 16 weeks in 2020 to nine weeks in 2025, it remains higher than the maximum wait time of 8.5 weeks recommended by the Canadian Association of Radiologists.

At St. Boniface, the monthly median wait time spiked from eight weeks in January, to 18 weeks in June. That month, 3,297 people were awaiting scans at St. Boniface, the data shows.

In an interview Tuesday, Linklater said the issue is driven, in part, by a lack of technologists certified to operate CT scanners. The provincewide vacancy rate for CT techs may be as high as 20 per cent as wait times for scans have skyrocketed, he said.

“That’s essentially what it boils down to. There just aren’t enough,” he said.

“Human resources workforce planning is an essential part that we’ve been talking about for so long and we still see it not happening, and I think people find that deflating.”

The union leader said training, recruitment and retention are critical to staffing up diagnostics labs.

“Shared Health has much more work to do to train and recruit more imaging technologists. At a minimum, they should be sponsoring people to take the specialized training needed, which they stopped doing for some reason, despite spiking vacancy rates and wait times.”

Previously, Shared Health offered education support for X-ray technologists. It covered the cost to have them trained to operate CT scanners. Linklater believes that funding recently ended, although he did not know the date.

Shared Health said it wasn’t able to answer that question Wednesday.

Linklater called for new recruitment and retention incentives to reward technologists for working in emergency departments.

— with files from Carol Sanders

tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca