Officials at Vancouver's St. Paul's Hospital deny that people who pay out of their own pocket for MRIs have been jumping the queue for the diagnostic tests.

B.C. Health Minister George Abbott said on Tuesday that he believes the hospital has been breaking the law by allowing private patients to pay for MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) tests during off-hours.

Private MRIs at St. Paul's Hospital are on hold while a provincial government investigation is carried out into allegations of queue jumping by private patients.
(CBC)

He has ordered a halt on all private MRIs at St. Paul's while an investigation is carried out.

A spokesman for Providence Health Care, which runs the downtown hospital, said there were 6,600 MRI scans done at St. Paul's last year and that only 330 of them were the result of referrals from private clinics.

Shaf Hussein told CBC Radio Wednesday that no Medical Service Plan patients are ever bumped or rescheduled in favour of people willing to pay for the test themselves.

"What we try and do is make sure the resources we have available are used as effectively as possible, the principle being that never, never would an MSP patient be ever bumped in favour of an off-hours third-party patient." 

Hussein said when there are cancellations in the public waiting list, the hospital calls the next names on both the public and private lists and gives the time to the first patient who's available.

"At no time is the MRI just sitting there and the staff just sitting there. That's the best way to use public resources and not letting them go to waste," he said.
 
NDP health critic Adrian Dix said the fault lies with the provincial government for not spending enough money to shorten waiting lists.