Three medical centres in Windsor have been approved to provide either gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy services, MRI or CT scans.
RAAMP Endoscopy along with Rose City Endoscopy have received licenses to provide the GI endoscopy service while GMNI MRI/CT Windsor will offer MRI and CT services.
The licensing for the three new centres will start as early as this summer.
Friday's announcement is part of the Ontario government's $155 million investment over two years to add 57 new community surgical and diagnostic centres licensed to deliver MRI and CT scans, and gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy services.
Dr. Wassim Saad is president of RAAMP Endoscopy.
He says they'll be renovating a current suite and hopes to have it fully operational by April 2026.
Dr. Saad says the centre will be open to all patients.
"We will likely get referrals from the emergency room, from primary care providers, from other specialists," says Dr. Saad. "It's not restricted to any sort of referral base. It will be open to anybody and everybody."
He says RAAMP Endoscopy is a new facility that will expand access and increase capacity in the system.
"Prior to this there was no outpatient RAAMP Endoscopy Unit, you couldn't do a scope other than at the hospital or a couple of other outpatient clinics currently," he says. "Now with this expansion of services, you all of a sudden have expanded the capacity in the system, more people can get their diagnostic test done in a more timely fashion. So it will reduce wait times for patients."
Dr. Saad says the centre will be hiring nurses, RPNs, physician assistants and nurse practitioners.
"In terms of the professional staff, those experts that are doing the scopes themselves are hospital privileged physicians who will split time between the hospital and the site," says Dr. Saad.
According to the province, RAAMP Endoscopy and Rose City Endoscopy are part of 22 newly licensed centres that will deliver GI endoscopy procedures across the province.
It's expected up to 420,000 procedures will be done over two years across the province at these new licensed centres.
The province says the expansion of MRI and CT scan services at GMNI MRI/CT Windsor is part of 35 newly licensed centres in Ontario and it's expected to provide access to diagnostic imaging for up to 828,000 additional patients across the province over the next two years.