As the House of Commons resumes its Sitting calendar for the fall, the CAR is renewing its advocacy efforts to ensure our messaging is heard ahead of the forthcoming federal budget.
This year’s Day on the Hill is planned for Tuesday, October 20. The CAR Board of Directors will meet with federal officials to share key messages about the state of radiology and patient health in Canada, and their impacts on the Canadian population, especially as related to the national economy and workforce health.
Our core message for the federal government is that investment in diagnostic imaging can have a direct and positive impact on Canada’s labour productivity, economic sovereignty, and fiscal recovery. In recent years, Canada has lost $64 billion in potential GDP and $6 billion in tax revenue due to diagnostic wait times. Nearly 2 million of working Canadians miss out on hours and wages while waiting for scans they need.
The CAR has prepared a four-lever approach for the federal government to reduce the backlog for scans and recoup lost productivity.
Equipment renewal and infrastructure
You can’t run 21st century equipment on 20th century hardware.
Most of Canada’s imaging fleet is old or overdue for upgrades and/or replacement. Additionally, hospital sites need preparation and retrofitted rooms to handle new equipment upgrades.
The CAR’s solution: Federal investment of $2 billion over three years via the Health Infrastructure Fund to cover new imaging equipment and site preparation costs.
Increase Health Human Resources (HHR)
Brand new scanners don’t operate themselves.
Even with an investment in new imaging equipment, skilled workers are still needed to operate them. There is a current 20-year trending gap between the amount of imaging requested and the total workforce able to handle the load: CT volume has increased 85.4% and MRI requests are up 131.7%, while the medical radiation technologist (MRT) workforce has only increased by 32.1%, with vacancies leaving many machines sitting idle over evenings and weekends.
The CAR’s solution: Health Canada invests $5 million over five years for a comprehensive HHR framework that targets retention, workload modeling, and Practice-Ready Assessments (PRAs).
Clinical Decision Support (CDS)
Eliminate system waste by working smarter.
Low-value referrals artificially inflate waitlists for urgent cancer, trauma, and stroke patients. Bill S-5, currently on its second reading in the House of Commons, provides the framework while CDS supplies the point-of-care utility. This digital efficiency aims to open thousands of scan slots without buying a single new machine.
The CAR’s solution: an allocation of $50 million over five years to scale Canadian-curated imaging referral guidelines into provincial EMR networks.
Health AI Validation Network (HAIVN): Clinician-Led AI Infrastructure
Using AI technology that has been validated post-market by clinicians removes speculation of its efficacy and accuracy.
Unvalidated AI leads to algorithm drift, demographic bias, and replicated administrative costs across Canada’s 13 health regions.
The CAR’s solution: direct an investment of $50 million over five years from the ISED’s $200 million AI Missions Program to operationalize HAIVN.