For the last four years, the CAR priority has been advocating and securing a federal investment in a medical imaging inventory across the country. As our members are aware, we had considerable movement in 2019, specifically during the federal election in October. After meeting with all the federal parties we secured a pledge for a $1.5 billion investment in medical imaging equipment. While this is a nonpartisan issue, the visibility was excellent and brought radiology forward at the federal level in a more meaningful way.
Although this priority has not yet been implemented, we have made significant progress. The CAR has been busy behind the scenes and on the hill driving this priority. On January 30, members of the CAR executive team took to Parliament to meet with MP Kitchen, a member of the Standing Committee on Health. We reminded him of the $3.5 billion savings in lost productivity that would be realized annually from an investment in medical imaging equipment and asked that he bring this forward to his colleagues on the health committee. We also sent requests to members of the Standing Committee on Finance and the Minister of Finance, Bill Morneau, to ask to appear before the committee and deliver a formal presentation on our 2020 pre-budget submission. On April 30, we are planning a Day on the Hill and scheduling meetings with the members of the Standing Committee on Health, the Prime Minister’s Office and the ministers of health and finance. We are working with the Conference Board of Canada to expand on the second Value of Radiology report to include the health human resources component required to support the investment in medical imaging. Many MPs have asked about the associated requirements to support our ask. We have preliminary data that we shared, however, in the coming months we are working with the Conference Board to provide a more robust report that addresses this very question.
It is thanks to the support of our members that we can do this work. We are optimistic that there will be progress on these initiatives over the next year. As radiologists, you can support these asks in your community. We have developed a series of tools to assist you in advocating with your federal and provincial representatives on our website. We invite you to reach out to Natalie St-Pierre at [email protected] for additional information or guidance on advocating on a grass-roots level.