BCRS Advocacy in Action

BC Radiological Society president Dr. Brenda Farnquist discusses her concerns about rising breast cancer screening wait times and how long waits impact patients.

BCRS Member, Dr. Paula Gordon, speaks to the wait times for Breast Imaging in BC. 

Dr. Farnquist said a critical shortage of medical imaging technologists and radiologists that practice breast imaging is also contributing to the issue. Publicly funded community imaging clinics are also under financial stress, she said. “It’s becoming very difficult for some of these clinics to even keep updated equipment. So some are even choosing to not

The BC Radiological Society is proud to share the news that people in BC now have access to mammography using Tomosynthesis. The use of mammography using Tomosynthesis is a proven technology that has the potential to detect cancer earlier. Early detection saves lives by detecting cancers when they are small and have not yet spread

The BC Radiological Society warns that the province’s medical imaging backlog will get worse, unless the BC government helps private clinics that are struggling to remain open.

Wait times for breast imaging at health authority sites are already out of control. If CICs which do breast imaging reduce services or close, it will be a complete disaster. There is high risk of this unless urgent action is taken.For many months now, we have been calling on the government to take urgent action

“The wait time in BC was bad in the fall and the situation is now critical,” Dr. Yong-Hing. 

Prior to the Health Estimates on Thursday April. 27th with the Minister of Health, the BCRS updated BC Liberal health critic Shirley Bond on our 4 key points.  Shirley Bond advanced all 4 key points in the legislature. You can view the transcript here.  The BCRS is disappointed that the Minister of Health continues to focus on a few select positive numbers