Great that treatment options are improving. But there are still serious bottlenecks in medicine. It seems to be a universal truth that getting a CT/MRI comes with a long wait time. General Practitioners often wait too long to order imaging as a result, and they are often unwilling to even consider cancer in younger people.
We need better (earlier) detection and faster access to it.
Just went through the process recently...
Luckily Urgent Care was able to go from ultrasound to CT scan in 1 day. The long wait time has come from the insurance honestly.
Had to go to a different hospital because the original one I went to has to get an approval from United before getting it done (other hospital 2 blocks away doesn't have that same requirement??)
I got referred to a dedicated cancer center and then guess what, I have to call United and ask them to approve it - but I can't get an appointment to do that for 2 weeks.
Ended up doing all the legwork on my own and was able to get a consultation done within a week. Now I'm having to do biopsies, PET scan, ect. Depending on the result I might be able to get it removed next week!
But the pain has become so severe I can't eat, sleep, even lay down without extreme discomfort. I can't imagine waiting around on the insurance to walk me through it.
Funny enough, United sent us a letter in the mail asking if I really wanted to get that original CT scan! Like no, I'd rather not know I have a 7" tumor in my abdomen. Simply a joke of an industry
I had a knee injury. Called my local orthopedic clinic (seven doctors). The lady who answered the phone told me I’d need to schedule an appointment . . . to schedule the appointment. I was three weeks out from the call at which I would schedule the appointment that would likely be months after that. American medicine is totally broken.
Universal in what country? In the US I've had two MRIs in the last few years for non urgent things and both were scheduled within less than a week.
The hold up is usually almost entirely insurance related for most people. People in my family (including myself) have had non-emergency imaging done several times over the past few years. We've had experiences ranging from getting it done same day to taking over a month to get approval and scheduled. This is in DFW, where there's no shortage of MRI machines around.
Meanwhile there are imaging labs that can do walk-ins if you're willing to pay cash and they have the slack in their schedule, usually somewhat cheap compared to what they'll bill insurance (and if you have a HDHP, what you'll pay). They don't want those machines idle, a gap in the schedule is money they aren't making.
> It seems to be a universal truth that getting a CT/MRI comes with a long wait time.
I wonder if this is regional. I was able to get an MRI scheduled within a couple weeks when I needed one for my non-urgent condition. This was in Chicago, so maybe we're just blessed with a surplus of MRI machines.
I was able to get one for my head once on the same day. One of the symptoms must have raised some major red flags, I guess. This was in Heidelberg, they have a huge medschool. For my knees I waited for weeks, if not months, though.
> getting a CT/MRI comes with a long wait time.
How long? It took me 1 day to get a CT at a clinic and a few hours in the ER.
I've seen anything from weeks to months. Weeks when it's the imaging center being booked, months when insurance requires pre-approval or something and times things poorly (hitting the legal deadline but missing the procedure's date for their approval, using the prior approval to deny "getting another" procedure on the date you rescheduled the missed scan, etc).
> It seems to be a universal truth that getting a CT/MRI comes with a long wait time
It 100% depends on your situation. I've had two clinical MRIs done in my life. One was same day. One was scheduled out a few days.