Health minister likes Niverville’s ‘innovative’ MRI plan, but decision will have to wait

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/08/2017 (3008 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s health minister won’t yet sign off on Niverville’s plans to team up with a private partner to build an MRI clinic, although he applauded the town for thinking outside the box.

“We’ve asked communities to be innovative and to be creative when it comes to health-care delivery,” Kelvin Goertzen told reporters Monday. “I am thankful and supportive of communities that bring forward innovative ideas.”

Further comment will have to wait, he said, as the province hasn’t yet received a copy of the proposal or had time to conduct its own analysis.

The Town of Niverville announced the unusual partnership last week. Project spokesman Gordon Daman, a member of the non-profit Niverville Heritage Holdings Inc. (NHHI) board, which brokered the deal with the town, Liver Care Canada and two individuals, has repeatedly stressed the project is neither public nor private.

The plan is to have a new magnetic resonance imaging machine, or MRI, operational by fall 2018. Liver Care Canada will foot the bill for the project, spending between $4 million and $5 million to buy the MRI and construct the diagnostic centre, which will also include ultrasound equipment, an X-ray machine and lab services. A legal agreement stipulates that in 25 years, the company will donate the centre and its equipment back to the town.

“A third way,” Daman described it.

NDP health critic Matt Wiebe isn’t convinced.

“It’s another step toward two-tier American-style health care here in this province,” said Wiebe, the MLA for Concordia. He told reporters the announcement is an indication that Goertzen’s trip to Saskatchewan to see how its private MRI clinics are functioning “sent a very clear signal to private companies and others that Manitoba was a place they could invest.”

“It’s a dangerous road,” said Wiebe, who argued the government should be focused on investing in the public system.

The federal government remains “committed to protecting our publicly funded health-care system,” a spokeswoman for Health Canada said via email. MRI scans are insured services, per the Canada Health Act, she said, and as such access “should be based on medical need, and not on the ability or willingness to pay.”

Goertzen said he doesn’t know enough yet about how the Niverville clinic fits or doesn’t fit under the health act, but with decreased federal health-care funding “something’s going to have to give.”

jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca