{"id":1287,"date":"2019-01-21T17:33:39","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T17:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=1287"},"modified":"2019-01-21T17:33:39","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T17:33:39","slug":"labor-to-deliver-medicare-funded-mri-scans-for-brisbanes-northside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2019\/01\/21\/labor-to-deliver-medicare-funded-mri-scans-for-brisbanes-northside\/","title":{"rendered":"LABOR TO DELIVER MEDICARE-FUNDED MRI SCANS FOR BRISBANE\u2019S NORTHSIDE"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nThe people of Brisbane\u2019s northside will benefit from better access to affordable life-saving medical scans under a Shorten Labor Government.
\nLabor will deliver a full Medicare-funded MRI licence to The Prince Charles Hospital, ensuring locals can access the scans they need close to home without paying high out-of-pocket costs.
\nThis is part of Labor\u2019s Fair Go Action Plan to protect Medicare and fix our hospitals.
\nThe Prince Charles is a major Brisbane hospital with over 600 beds. It has a particular speciality in heart imaging and has two MRI machines as part of its Centre of Excellence in Cardiovascular MRI.
\nHowever neither MRI machine has a full Medicare licence \u2013 meaning Medicare doesn\u2019t cover scans for most outpatients.
\nLabor will upgrade one of these MRIs to a full licence, expanding access to bulk-billed MRI scans and cutting wait times.
\nA bipartisan Senate inquiry recognised Brisbane\u2019s northside as an area of major shortage a year ago.
\nThe Government\u2019s own data shows that the Brisbane North Primary Health Network has one of the lowest numbers of fully eligible MRIs per capita in the country.
\nThe Liberals have acknowledged there\u2019s a shortage but after nearly six years in power they\u2019ve done nothing about it.
\nThat\u2019s typical of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government. They know there\u2019s a problem \u2013 but they\u2019re too distracted by their own divisions to actually fix them.
\nThis announcement builds on Labor\u2019s commitment to also deliver an MRI licence to nearby Redcliffe Hospital. Elsewhere in Queensland, Labor has also promised an MRI licence for Gladstone.
\nMRI scans are used to detect and diagnose conditions that affect soft tissue \u2013 including tumours and cancer \u2013 and can mean the difference in detecting a disease as early as possible. But they only attract a rebate if they are performed on a machine with a licence.
\nLabor has a proud record on MRIs, granting 238 licences when we were last in office. That means hundreds of communities are benefiting from the early detection and diagnosis of disease today because of Labor\u2019s investment.
\nThe Liberals on the other hand neglected this issue for most of their time in office, granting just one a year in their first five years. It has only been in recent months they have recognised their dismal failure in this space and moved to match Labor’s commitments.
\nLabor has already announced 10 new licences for public hospitals around the country. We will still deliver a further 10 licences through a transparent application process if we win Government.
\nLabor\u2019s investment in MRI licences comes on top of our commitment to invest an extra $2.8 billion in public hospitals.
\nWe will reverse the Liberal public hospital cuts and ensure our emergency departments and hospital wards have the doctors, nurses and hospital staff to keep up with record demand.
\nLabor can afford to protect Medicare and fix our hospitals because we are tackling unfair tax loopholes and making multinationals pay their fair share.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The people of Brisbane\u2019s northside will benefit from better access to affordable life-saving medical scans under a Shorten Labor Government. Labor will deliver a full Medicare-funded MRI licence to The Prince Charles Hospital, ensuring locals can access the scans they need close to home without paying high out-of-pocket costs. This is part of Labor\u2019s Fair … Continue reading “LABOR TO DELIVER MEDICARE-FUNDED MRI SCANS FOR BRISBANE\u2019S NORTHSIDE”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}