are wait times for ct scans, mri exams and other diagnostic imaging getting any better in nova scotia?
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two mri technologists are seen near a machine in the mri magnet room at the victoria general hospital in halifax on thursday.
tim krochak
/
chronicle herald
reducing wait times for diagnostic imaging remains a top priority for the medical professionals who run those departments in nova scotia.
dr. tim mailman is the senior medical director of the provincial diagnostics and therapeutics network, and dr. james clarke is the medical director for diagnostic imaging for the central zone within nova scotia health. they are two of the province’s leaders in the field who deal daily with the issues around patient access to exams like x-rays, ct scans, ultrasounds and mris.
the availability of those services had become a significant problem by the end of the last decade, and both doctors say additional challenges during the covid-19 shutdowns shone such a bright light on it that delaying solutions was no longer an option.
“the pandemic slowed things down, although people getting sick didn’t slow down, so we started to develop a provincial backlog,” mailman said.
“we also had a significant population increase between 2015 and about 2023. we added over 100,000 people to the province. a lot of them settled in the central zone, which the wait lists and wait times were reflecting. and then we had some workforce shortages, so it was really sort of a perfect storm of increased demand, increased population and (insufficient) workforce.”
a calming light fixture is seen above an mri machine in the mri magnet room at the victoria general hospital in halifax on thursday.
tim krochak
/
chronicle herald
to attack those problems, nova scotia health needed more of everything: more staff, more machines and, most importantly, more funding from the government. in addition to continued steadfast support from non-profit foundations at places like the qeii health sciences centre, iwk health centre, cape breton regional hospital and dartmouth general hospital, mailman said they got that extra help from the provincial government when it launched the action for health strategic plan in 2022.
the broad solutions of the four-year program as they relate to imaging included spending on upgrades and additions to the province’s equipment, an aggressive hiring campaign and a modernized administrative system.
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along with more collaboration and financial contributions from various foundations in the province, there have been improvements to nova scotia’s equipment supply. four new spect/ct nuclear medicine scanners have been added or replaced since 2024, with two more in the works. a high-tech cone beam ct for 3d teeth, jaw and facial images went into the qeii in 2025.
also, the bayers lake outpatient clinic opened in 2023 with four new ultrasound machines and a bone mineral density unit, 10 replacement x-ray devices went to different sites around the province, cape breton regional got four new ultrasound units, the valley regional hospital replaced its mri machine in the spring and the south shore regional hospital just opened its new mri suite two weeks ago.
a monitor in the mri room at the victoria general hospital in halifax on thursday.
tim krochak
/
chronicle herald
there are also two new photon counting computed tomography (pcct) scanners, used for advance tissue imaging, slated for the qeii in 2027 and dartmouth general in 2028.
but perhaps the biggest win specific to this field is new movable technology like the $4-million mri unit at the bayers lake outpatient centre.
“this relocatable mri is essentially an mri in a box that can be put on a concrete pad at any facility in nova scotia, and bayers lake is our pilot with it,” mailman said.
“it’s been highly successful because outpatients are generally quite ambulatory compared to inpatients, and the types of scans are generally quicker. you’re dealing with healthy, moving people, so the ability to do large numbers of scans quite quickly is the benefit of those, and we’re starting to see that now with the bayers lake facility. ”
but having better equipment — and more of it — required an equivalent increase in trained staff to operate it all. in 2026 alone, there were 52 new diagnostic imaging technologists hired in nova scotia and the total number of positions is up by 35.
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“a few years back, a decision was made to double the class sizes for the radiation technologist program at the school of health sciences at dalhousie and for the sonography program at the school of health sciences,” clarke said.
“so, we’ll be graduating more nova scotians who have the skills and ability to actually make these scanners work and help address that.
“the first increased class of sonographers graduated this year, and the first double cohort graduating class for the general (radiology) techs is graduating this coming year. it’s going to make a huge impact . . . because now we’ve got more folks who can run the scanners and we’re working on reducing that wait list, which is great. right now, it’s still a little bit of a challenge. there’s a shortage worldwide for medical radiation technologists who run the scanners, so recruitment and retention efforts are heavily underway but they’re challenging, to be honest.
mri technologists are seen in the mri room at the victoria general hospital in halifax on thursday.
tim krochak
/
chronicle herald
“so trying to graduate more nova scotians who are going to come out, stay at home, and help run the scanners is going to be fantastic. that would have been three years ago that those decisions were made to have programs put in place to offer, essentially, guaranteed jobs to all the graduating students for a five-year period. we’re three to three-and-a-half years into that.”
the final piece of the puzzle was more efficiency at the administrative level. managing referrals, sign-ups and appointments needed upgrading, so there was a push for improvements to the computer and tracking systems to reduce the reliance on the much slower process of maintaining and circulating paper records.
the electronic referral system launched in september 2023 and a central intake hub for the province followed in august 2025.
“what we were seeing when we started to tackle this is the huge discrepancies in wait lists between areas in the province,” mailman said.
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“so if you happen to be in an area that had a huge wait time, despite paying the same taxes as someone in the next town over, you may have a much longer wait list. so one of the biggest things we’ve done . . . is we’ve created a central intake for diagnostic imaging in nova scotia.
“so regardless of where you live, if the wait time is shorter somewhere else, you will have the opportunity to access that. and we know some people aren’t able to travel, but it still brings equity because if someone else is able to travel outside of the halifax area to antigonish for an mri, for example, we’re now opening a spot here in halifax, as well. so what central intake is doing is smoothing the wait time.”
the mri magnet room at the victoria general hospital in halifax on thursday.
tim krochak
/
chronicle herald
both clarke and mailman say shortening wait times is far from a finished project, but the improvements over the past few years are undeniable. data provided by nova scotia health showed a 39 per cent increase in annual ct scans performed since the pre-pandemic era (169,410 in 2019-20 versus 236,275 in 2025-26), plus a 47 per cent bump in mris (40,055 in 2019-20 versus 58,815 in 2025-26).
there were 1,240,000 diagnostic imaging exams completed in 2024-25, which represents an increase of 109,000 from the year before. the total jumped to 1,260,000 in 2025-26.
“there are a lot of different types of mris, but let’s look at routine joints, for example,” clarke said.
“say you have an injury to your shoulder and your family doc wants to have a look at it and make sure that you haven’t torn a rotator cuff, or to see if you’ve got something going on with your tendons or your ligaments. those are the ones that we’re getting to within six to eight weeks.
“or if you’ve got lower back pain that’s been grumbling for a while and they need to get your spine checked out, those are examinations where we don’t administer heavy contrast (media). so, previously, you might be waiting nine to 12 months for one of those studies on a routine outpatient basis, and we’ve gotten it down to six to eight weeks. i don’t want to oversell it because there are still some studies where you might wait a year or more, but we have gotten a lot of our wait lists down significantly.”
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but as is the case with any improvement to the provincial health-care system, reducing wait times doesn’t come cheap. under premier tim houston’s leadership, public spending in the sector increased by 36 per cent ($1.9 billion) from 2022 to 2025. included in that is $44.5 million for new diagnostic imaging projects.
“nova scotians are telling us they are worried about getting the health care they need when they need it,” rod wilson, nova scotia ndp health critic, said. “people believed the houston government would move the needle, but after five years, nova scotians are waiting longer for cts and other vital scans they need while staff burn out trying to help.
“if this government is serious about making a difference, they need to focus on retaining and training more staff so that nova scotians don’t have to wait in pain for answers about their health.”
for those like mailman and clarke at the ground level who see it as a work in progress, the commitment feels like a step in the right direction.
an mri technologist places a new sheet for an upcoming patient on the scanner bed in the mri magnet room at the victoria general hospital in halifax on thursday.
tim krochak
/
chronicle herald
“the analogy that i sometimes use for wait lists in diagnostic imaging is it’s like you’ve got a really long bus, and there are thousands of people on that bus,” clarke said.
“there are always people getting off the bus at the back door because they’re getting their scans done. but there are always people arriving in the front door of the bus, so there’s a different few thousand people that are waiting. people do get their scans done and they do move through, but unless you can (improve) something meaningfully to get a whole bunch of people out of the bus, you’re always going to have these wait times.
“we were falling behind and it was getting worse, so i think the commitments the government made, and the efforts to refresh the equipment, are making a difference. a (new) mri scanner can scan 30 per cent more people than one of our older scanners. the technology has improved that much. and that’s with the same number of technologists. now we have more people, too.”
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added mailman: “2026 is going to be a big year in health care in nova scotia, particularly for diagnostic imaging. . . . by the end of this year, we’re hoping to really have very accurate prospective wait time data. our wait time data up until this point has been retrospective. what that means is we can tell you how long someone waited for an mri before he got it, but that doesn’t tell you how long you’re going to wait. that’s what people care about.”
in the mri magnet room at the victoria general hospital in halifax on thursday.
tim krochak
/
chronicle herald
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