Around $2 million has been funneled into the University of Minnesota’s latest healthcare project: a third MRI machine that’s expected to cut waiting times for patients who typically wait up to three weeks for a scan.
A university board approved the new machine in June, the Minnesota Daily reported. It’s expected to be functional by December. Charles Dietz, chair of the college’s department of radiology, said the scanner will be key to better quality care.
“One or two weeks probably doesn’t make much of a difference for [cancer] patients, but I can tell you emotionally, to not know whether you have cancer, or what the kind of cancer is, if you can’t get a scan within a week, that’s a very scary proposition,” he told the Daily.
The university’s Clinics and Surgery Care Center greenlighted the project in response to a consistent 10 percent increase in demand each year for MRI exams at the hospital. Joanne Johnson, the senior clinic manager at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Clinical Imaging Research, said the rise in demand could have something to do with more college athletes being referred for MRIs.
Dietz said the university has been extending its imaging operations to after-hours and weekends to accommodate the growth.
“What we’re finding is patients actually don’t mind [getting an MRI done on] evenings and weekends,” he said. “What they do mind is waiting two weeks.”
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After graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington with a bachelor’s in journalism, Anicka joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering cardiology. Close to her heart is long-form journalism, Pilot G-2 pens, dark chocolate and her dog Harper Lee.