In the vein of the recent UK MRI thread, I thought I would share my experience in Perth, WA. I have a NExT and an XM1 in my hands, and had an MRI on my knee this afternoon.
Originally SKG booked me in to my local clinic within a few days but on the day of the appointment weren’t able to proceed. Apparently their safety manager has decided that there isn’t sufficient evidence available to confirm that it’s safe yet. I provided the local tech with copies of some of the research and they said they would forward it on and maybe things would change but for the moment they couldn’t help me. They also pointed out that they only had a 3T machine while some of the research was on 1.5T, so they seemed a bit doubtful that it would have much of an impact.
Perth Rad Clinic in the city on the other hand had no problem. They are a private clinic and apparently they deal with more complex imaging cases. They gave me the option of paying out of pocket for an earlier appointment or waiting a bit for one that could be partially refunded. I went with the later appointment and they ended up bulk billing the whole thing.
I had no problems, no movement, no heat, I didn’t feel a thing, both HF chips are still working perfectly (I don’t really use the LF side of the NExT and I haven’t dug out my pm to test it). Unfortunately it was only a 1.5T machine so my case can’t really be used as evidence to help convince SKG.
I don’t remember exactly which documents I gave to SKG. I definitely had Amal’s letter which does mention 3T testing, I’m pretty sure I had the Verichip MRISafety entry which goes up to 7T, the 1.5T comment might have been in relation to the “Magnetic Resonance Imaging & VeriChip RFID Human Implant at 1.5 Tesla” paper.
Not to get political, but I often see these universal or public health care systems routinely denying imaging for any reason they can think of. Say what you want about private health care but even Canadians come down to the US to get things done when shit gets serious… otherwise it’s massive delays and denials everywhere.
I’m not sure that’s the case here. SKG is also a private company owned by Sonic Healthcare which is a big multinational, and even compared to the fully out of pocket option with PRC they were quite fast to get me booked in. It wasn’t until I was there in the gown filling out the safety survey that they decided not to proceed.
SKG does seem to be the default option for the public hospitals and a lot of the GPs, so maybe they get more of their business through the government system but they aren’t really public healthcare.
The tech recommended PRC because they are one of the few places willing to do an MRI on someone with a pacemaker, so I think they just have different risk appetites/risk management processes.