A clear picture

For lack of $3 million in funding, the Saskatoon Health Region is cutting back on all kinds of imaging procedures which could otherwise assist in patient diagnosis:

With the Saskatoon Health Region's diagnostic imaging department over budget by $3 million, the health region is looking to reduce the number of tests performed. Between now and the end of the fiscal year in March, the region has proposed 1,700 fewer CT scans, 660 fewer bone scans and 770 fewer ultrasounds.

Which is bad enough both on its own, and when paired with the need to reduce wait lists for the exact same tests from other regions. But a lack of imaging services may also render useless the $5 million the province plans to spend on clinical testing for MS liberation therapy:

Savoie also cautioned that there are no details yet about how the research team will be selected or how scientific rigour and independence will be maintained. Researchers also need a reliable imaging method to determine if a person's neck veins are indeed blocked, he said.

"Knowing how to get a reliable image of the anatomical blockage that we are talking about ... is actually a fundamental building block to doing a trial to examine the potential efficacy of treatments to unblock the vessel," said Savoie.

"At the end of the day, if you do a treatment trial to look at unblocking the veins, and you're not sure of whether or not they're blocked in the first place, you could bias your results."

At best, one might theorize that the MS trials might take up some of the cleared capacity in Saskatoon. But even then, the balance of the province's MS patients will be worse off as a result of Wall's waitlist. And if the trials themselves end up being less effective for want of the exact services being cut as a result of Wall's neglect of health care generally, then there won't be any available conclusion other than that the Sask Party has chosen to spend more to accomplish less than Saskatchewan's residents have a right to expect from their health care system.