Skip to content

LETTER: Medical imaging service at Mission Hospital currently fully-staffed

I am writing in response to the story Mission hospital technologists being forced to relocate due to staffing shortages, May 27, and to acknowledge concerns and provide clarity about efforts to manage the current technologist shortage in medical imaging across the province, and in the eastern Fraser Valley, specifically.
29363025_web1_220610-MCR-letterstaffing-KElett_1

I am writing in response to the story Mission hospital technologists being forced to relocate due to staffing shortages, May 27, and to acknowledge concerns and provide clarity about efforts to manage the current technologist shortage in medical imaging across the province, and in the eastern Fraser Valley, specifically.

I would like to reassure you that medical imaging service at Mission Memorial Hospital (MMH) is currently fully-staffed.

Ensuring residents of Mission continue to have access to these services will remain a priority. Currently to support nearby communities while we are experiencing a staffing shortage we will temporarily re-assign technologists from Mission Memorial Hospital on weekdays.

This will not impact access to outpatient x-ray services at Mission Memorial. I can assure you this is not a permanent change.

As we deal with a shortage of staff, we will adjust shifts, offer overtime and work with staff on additional supports and solutions.

This may include potentially moving staff among our locations to ensure timely access to our services.

In doing this, we will honour collective agreements, which provide health authorities with the option to assign staff where operational needs are the greatest.

We will also offer appointments in other locations if wait times begin to increase in certain locations.

It’s part of our normal operating procedures to help balance access to care for all patients — this is how a network of hospitals support each other.

We respect the value that Mission residents rightly place on local care and services. As such, we are committed to providing ongoing and sustainable imaging services and have invested in a new CT Scan to support Mission and the surrounding communities.

We appreciate the ongoing efforts of all our staff who continue to work hard to deliver services across all our communities during these challenging times.

Ken Winnig

Executive Director, Lower Mainland Medical Imaging

Provincial Health Services Authority