On Friday November 17, Te Whatu Ora Tairāwhiti released information via Facebook and the Herald announcing approval for a new MRI scanner. These articles suggest patients requiring prostate and cardiac MRI are sent out of town for imaging. This is incorrect.
Pre-biospy prostate MRI has been available locally since 2016. From January 2016-September 2022 over 550 prostate MRIs were performed and interpreted at the Gisborne Hospital. Since September 2023, prostate MRI in select men has been done on premises at Matai Medical Research at no cost to the hospital thanks to funds from the Prostate Cancer Foundation of NZ. Men ineligible for that funding have continued to have their scans at the hospital.
In 2021, only 30 percent of men requiring prostate biopsy nationally had a pre-biopsy MRI — since 2016, 100 percent of such men in Tairāwhiti have had pre-biopsy MRI.
Likewise, cardiac MRI has been performed locally since January 2016. Since then over 250 cardiac MRIs have been performed on the hospital MRI scanner and interpreted locally. (Patients were sent to Hawke’s Bay for cardiac MRI over my sabbatical from June-August 2023 despite a local alternative being available.)
Te Whatu Ora Tairāwhiti does routinely send some patients out of town for MRI: patients with pacemakers/defibrillators, patients requiring IV sedation or general anaesthesia, and patients requiring urgent after-hours or weekend scans. The new scanner will not change this practice.
