In 2025, it should be unthinkable that a major regional referral hospital in New South Wales operates without an MRI machine. Yet that is the situation at Armidale Hospital – a facility serving tens of thousands of New Englanders and functioning as a teaching hospital for the University of New England.
The absence of essential radiology equipment in country hospitals is not just a clinical inconvenience. It is a policy failure with measurable costs to patient outcomes, hospital efficiency, and the state budget.
When a patient in Armidale requires an MRI, they must wait for an appointment at a private clinic. In the meantime, they remain in a hospital bed – often for days – solely because the necessary diagnostic tool is unavailable on-site.
I know. My recent hospital admission for garden variety pancreatitis was extended by an unnecessary four days waiting for an MRI to try and find a gallstone or whatever was the cause of my problems, so a surgical plan could be worked out. And while I was waiting for my MRI, another young woman on her third day in hospital was also brought in for an MRI, looking for her gallstones.
NSW Health’s own figures place the cost of a hospital bed at $1,075 per day. Add the cost of a private MRI (around $700), patient transfer staff, and transport time, and the price tag per similarly delayed patient quickly exceeds $5,000.
These delays also clog surgical and medical wards, forcing hospitals into “bed block” – where patients who could be discharged or moved to appropriate care are stuck waiting, and new patients can’t be admitted. This in turn delays surgery, increases the risk of complications, and places further strain on severely overworked staff.
The economics are straightforward. At an estimated $2 million to purchase and install an MRI machine, the investment would be recouped in fewer than 12 months in a hospital the size of Armidale. That is before accounting for the clinical benefits: faster diagnoses, earlier interventions, reduced complications, and better patient outcomes.
This problem is not unique to Armidale – nor do i think it is a Hunter New England Health failure (although I saw plenty of those during my stay in Armidale and Tamworth hospitals). Across NSW, regional patients are travelling unnecessary distances – sometimes hundreds of kilometres – for scans and X-rays that could and should be available locally. A recent case in Bingara saw a patient forced to travel to another town for a basic X-ray after a common fall, and thats despite Bingara being listed as having X-Ray.
The inequity is stark. No metropolitan hospital would be permitted to operate without essential radiology capacity. Yet in regional NSW, the expectation persists that patients will “make do” with long waits, ambulance transfers, and compromised care. In the cities, the federal government is paying for X-Ray machines to be installed in the new Urgent Care clinics, but in small hospitals like Bingara, or
The Minns Government and Health Minister Ryan Park must confront this gap in service provision. Investing in MRI and other diagnostic equipment in regional hospitals is not a luxury – it is a cost-saving measure that improves efficiency and frees up desperately needed bed space.
Regional healthcare delivery must be measured not just by staffing levels or capital works, but by whether facilities have the tools to deliver timely, effective care. Without those tools, patients suffer, staff burn out, and the state continues to haemorrhage money on avoidable inefficiencies.
It is time to end the radiology deserts in country NSW. Equip our hospitals properly, and stop accepting second-class healthcare as an inevitable part of living outside Sydney.
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The whole medical situation is a failure in all rural sectors.
One of the big failures of the health system is the introduction of new technologies to hospital clinical practice. The first X-rays were by Roentgen in 1895 and here we are 130 years later unable to provide basic X-rays in hospitals and townships such as Bingara.
MRI technology came on line in the 1980’s and here we are with large urban hospitals such as Armidale unable to incorporate the technology in its service model, and it is 45 years since the technology came on line.
The same comment can be made about new treatments – thrombolytic treatment of strokes was shown to work by the San Diego group over 35 years ago and to be as revolutionary as thrombolytic treatment of heart attacks. It took over 25 years to meander out to a rural setting and timely brain imaging is still unavailable in many rural settings.
I Had mri in Inverell very expensive no Medicare cover nor for any concession card
Gayle Meek’s That is why I had mine done at Grafton 😐