MRI SCAN SCANDAL

Derby's hospitals trust is earning £100,000 a year from doing MRI scans for fee-paying patients despite year-long waiting lists for its NHS patients who face waits of up to two years for magnetic resonance imaging scans. Now we have discovered the MRI scanner, based at Derbyshire Royal Infirmary, is used on a Saturday for "three or four" scans on patients who are charged £300 to £600 each, amounting to £100,000 a year.

Southern Derbyshire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said it does not have the NHS resources to make the scanner available beyond its current 56 hours, five days a week. The £675,000 scanner was acquired in 2001, funded by the National Lottery's New Opportunities Fund. Paul Selmic, the trust's general manager of imaging services, said cash from fee-paying patients was used partly to pay for staff to run the sessions and the remainder was ploughed back into NHS services.

Patients can be referred by a consultant - either privately or through the NHS, but they can also book themselves in for a scan, subject to a consultant's agreement. The practice, which the trust said was not uncommon in areas with few private hospitals doing MRI scans, came to light after patient Keith Taylor revealed he had booked himself in for a scan at the DRI in February after initially being referred by a consultant.

Lengthy waits for routine MRI scans are a national problem and have arisen because of increasing numbers being referred for scans. In Derby the average wait has gone up from 29 weeks in 2002 to 32 in 2003 and now stands at 53. But emergency cases are dealt with much more quickly.

Mr Selmic said that the trust had applied for extra NHS funding from southern Derbyshire's five primary care trusts, which run GP services, to increase the scanner's use from 56 to 70 hours a week. But he said this was refused by the care trusts, which currently pay £718,000 a year towards the scanner's use and are investing £513,000 in a second scanner, due to be installed at the DRI later this year. (Source: Derby Evening Telegraph)

A multi-million-pound government deal with a private company, aimed at clearing up the long waits for diagnostic scans for the NHS has backfired, leaving some patients waiting up to a year and a half for a scan. A shortage of funding for MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans, combined with enormous problems experienced by the private firm commissioned to do thousands of NHS scans, has led to much longer queues in some areas. MRI scanners can be used to diagnose a range of conditions from hip and knee difficulties to neurological problems. But demand for them has risen far more quickly than the funding available through the hospital trusts. At the same time, the introduction of the private company Alliance Medical, which promised to provide thousands of extra, faster scans, has been beset with errors.

A letter from a radiologist to her colleagues at Kingston Hospital in Surrey, underlines the problems. Dr Caroline Ward, consultant radiologist, wrote to colleagues, warning that waiting times had risen from 26 to 52 weeks and that this month was expected to rise to 78 weeks. Her hospital is only paid to carry out 3,000 scans a year, whatever the demand. She wrote: "This is a funding issue as there is spare capacity in scanning time at present. The MRI scanner will be unused except for urgent referrals and private patients during the month of March as the current year's budget has been fully spent." Dr Ward also reveals that they tried to use the Alliance Medical service, which would have increased the numbers they could have treated, "but encountered many problems including delays of up to eight weeks in reporting (scans)."

John Lister, of the campaign group London Health Emergency, said, "At a time when more patients need these scans it is crazy to cap the funding for it. Why have we got scanners lying idle?" The Department of Health is reviewing thousands of scans carried out by Alliance Medical. The scanner programme was awarded to the private firm in 2004 and attracted accusations of cronyism when it emerged that former Health Secretary Alan Milburn worked as a £30,000-a-year consultant for its parent company, Bridgepoint. A spokeswoman for Kingston Hospital NHS Trust said, "We have approached our local primary care trusts (PCTs) for funding, which would enable us to provide more scans." (Source: The Observer)