The multimillion-dollar MRI machine coming to Dubbo Hospital will be used by inpatients and outpatients at no charge to them, says general manager Debbie Bickerton.
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The bill for inpatients, people who have been admitted to the hospital, will be covered by state funding, as it is now when they are taken elsewhere for the test.
Mrs Bickerton said outpatients, such as people with referrals from the Specialist Medical Centre at Manera Plaza, would not have to pay because of the licence announced by federal Member for Parkes Mark Coulton in March.
Under the licence, Medicare will be bulk billed for an estimated 3354 services provided to outpatients.
"If we didn't have a licence..we would have had to charge the patient," she said.
If we didn't have a licence .. we would have had to charge the patient.
- Dubbo Hospital general manager Debbie Bickerton
The general manager said the hospital also benefited from the licence.
"A licence means we can bill for those patients which means the service becomes more efficient to run because we get some revenue from it," she said.
Ms Bickerton confirmed that the machine would stop the flow of inpatients to private medical diagnostic imaging centres in Dubbo and for more complicated cases, Orange Hospital.
"We send people off site every day to go and have tests," she said. "We will be able to do everything here."
The general manager was speaking about the MRI machine and the licence while checking out a three-storey clinical building going up under stage four redevelopment.
The ground floor of the building will house a new imaging unit from where the MRI machine will operate.
"There will be an increase in staff in the imaging department because we are going from one CT scanner to two and will have an MRI machine as well," Ms Bickerton said.
She estimates the cost of the MRI machine to the state government to be "over $2 million".
An MRI is a medical scan which gives a detailed view of the soft tissues of the body such as muscles, ligaments, brain tissue, discs and blood vessels. It is used to diagnose and monitor a number of different medical conditions including cancer and sporting injuries.
