‘Very frustrating:’ Donor speaks about declined offer for Estevan MRI

All Elaine Walkom wanted to do was remember her late husband and help out the people in the southeast who helped them build their business — but her offer to fund a new MRI machine in Estevan has been brushed off for two years.

“Besides the legacy for my husband, I wanted to do something as payback for those people because without those people we wouldn’t have been the success that the company became,” Walkom told Gormley on Thursday morning.

“They take a day off work (to drive to Regina to get an MRI); everything has to be rearranged. Winter driving is horrendous and then people that live in the southeast corner, that’s a three-hour drive for them, you know, knuckle-driving in the wintertime. It just makes more sense to have (an MRI machine) in Estevan because it’s a hub.”

Walkom said she first made the offer in 2021, but it took several months to get a meeting with then-Rural and Remote Health Minister Everett Hindley and local MLA Lori Carr.

“The meeting really came to nothing. They said, ‘Well, we’ll get back to you but we don’t think it’s really going to fly because there’s not the population. We don’t have the funds’ — you know, the same old rhetoric,” Walkom said.

She tried other meetings and calls to the minister and, eventually, Premier Scott Moe, but it didn’t help.

“It’s very frustrating because nobody really wants to take your phone call,” said Walkom.

“I don’t know where to go from here, I’m very disappointed, I was absolutely stunned that I wasn’t getting anywhere when, you know, you’re offering money.”

She named a few other families and said they’ve come out to say they’d be willing to donate money as well.

“I’m not sure that the government couldn’t kick in money here because they kick in for far stupider things,” she said.

The provincial government appears to be rethinking the donation.

Hindley, who’s now the province’s health minister, told Gormley he has told his people that this is something they need to look into. He said his office has asked the St. Joseph’s Hospital in Estevan for an official proposal on this idea.

“We want to take a look at the proposal, how that donation would factor into the potential purchase of an MRI and the staffing and all the associated costs that go along with that on an annual operating basis,” said Hindley.

Once that proposal and presentation comes, Hindley said there are other things the government will have to take a look at as well.

“What are our current waiting lists? What are our projections for this going into the future? And where do we need to be to have whether it’s MRIs, whether it’s CT scanners (or whether it’s) X-ray machines?” he said.

Hindley said in his experience, the government would then have to look at the idea as part of the budgeting process, which comes to a head every year when the provincial budget is released in the spring.