December 20, 2006, The Brantford Expositor

BGH gets funds to run MRI

Michael-Allan Marion
Expositor Staff/ Brantford

Local health-care providers are calling a provincial funding announcement for an MRI machine “a wonderful Christmas present.”

Health Minister George Smitherman said Tuesday that $800,000 in annual funding will be provided for the operation of a long-sought MRI machine at Brantford General Hospital .

The funding commitment means the Brantford General Hospital Foundation and community volunteers can go ahead and complete the raising of $2.5 million to buy and install the machine that will finally fill a vacant room built in the hospital years ago. So far, $600,000 has been raised.

If all goes well, the machine will be ready for use in July, with government funding for 4,160 scans a year. Suffering long wait times for MRI examinations in Hamilton will come to an end.

“That makes me happy, but, more important, it's going to make a lot of people happy,” were Brant MPP Dave Levac's first words after reading the announcement.

“There is a tremendous amount of joy for those who are waiting for this service.”

Levac is congratulating the community for showing the necessary persistence and the ability to speak with one voice on the need for an MRI that helped him persuade Smitherman to approve the money.

Sustained applause from dozens of top hospital and public health administrators and local politicians greeted Levac and Smitherman when the MPP read a short note from the minister in the Best Western Brant Park Inn announcing operating funding for a “magnetic resonance imaging machine.”

Levac said the fulfilment of the MRI quest was the result of a hard political journey by an entire community to persuade the government of the necessity to cut wait times in Brant for the diagnostic service, in the face of similar competing demands for funding from across the province.

He also praised Smitherman “because he didn't beat me up every time I bugged him about the MRI.”

In his turn, a smiling Smitherman said: “To be frank about it, I didn't actually think I'd see this day happen."

The minister thanked the community for its patience. “I can now say ‘MRI services are at last in Brantford .'”

In an interview, Smitherman said Brantford 's case for an MRI machine, while strong, was “not the most pressing.”

Its case moved up in priority, he added, as the government improved wait times while providing funding for machines in other municipalities, he said.

Speculation about the funding commitment had been moving through health care and political ranks all day since a one-sentence ministerial advisory went out that Smitherman would be in Brantford on Tuesday afternoon to make “an important announcement regarding medical equipment at Brantford General Hospital .”

City councillors John Bradford, Richard Carpenter, Marguerite Ceschi-Smith and Jennifer Kinneman, with an infant in arms, converged for the announcement, along with dozens of hospital administrators, department heads and diagnostic specialists led by Rick Woodcock, CEO of the Brant Community Healthcare System.

“I'm extremely happy,” Gordon Stratford, chairman of BGH's board of governors, said in an interview after the announcement. “This is about the best Christmas present we've received in a long time.”

Kathy Stauffer, chairwoman of The Willett's board of governors, said that people at the Paris facility will be happy because they won't have far to go for an examination.