Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen is being cautious in responding to the announcement last week of a private diagnostic clinic in Niverville that would offer services like MRI scans. Goertzen says he can't say much about the Niverville plan until he sees the details. But he notes there are private clinics like this elsewhere in the country.

"Certainly I know in other provinces, and it's been the case for a very long time, that there have been private diagnostic clinics operating. There's no question that there are ways that private clinics can operate within the Canada Health

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Health Minister Kelvin GoertzenCare system so that isn't necessarily new. This proposal might be unique, we just haven't seen the details around it."

Goertzen says he has been told he will get those details later this week. He applauds the fact that Niverville is being creative with the plan. He notes that, as federal funding for health care declines, there will be a need for new proposals on how to provide health care services.

"We're looking for innovative ideas, looking for creative ideas within the health care system. Niverville, along with other communities in the southeast, has a long history of coming forward with creative and innovative ideas to support health care needs in their communities and, more broadly, around the province. So I'm pleased that there are innovative ideas coming forward. But we do need to do a full analysis on this proposal because we've not actually had the details come to our office."

Goertzen adds there is precedent in Manitoba for private health clinics.

"The Pan Am Clinic at one point was private. We've got the West End Surgical Centre and Maples Surgical Centre, they are private operations that get government support in terms of the funding of some of the procedures that happen within them. So there certainly is precedent in Manitoba for privately-operated clinics and health care facilities. Whether this is within the context of those sort of operations, I'm not sure because I've not seen the details."

In Saskatchewan, the federal government grudgingly agreed to allow a private MRI clinic as long as the clinic offered a scan to someone on the public waiting list for every person who paid for the service privately.

The Niverville proposal would see patients charged between $1,000 and $1,300 for an MRI scan and then, after 25 years, the building and the equipment would become the property of the town.