MRI Wait Times in 2025: Canada, UK and Australia vs Beijing — The Real Numbers

In 2025, the gap between waiting for an MRI in Canada, the UK, or Australia — and simply getting one done in Beijing — has never been wider. This article presents the numbers, their sources, and what they mean for patients whose diagnosis cannot wait.

The Numbers at a Glance

Canada: 18.1 Weeks — the Second Longest Ever Recorded

The Fraser Institute's Waiting Your Turn 2025 report — published December 2025 and based on a national physician survey — found that Canadians waited a median of 18.1 weeks for an MRI scan. This is up from 16.2 weeks in 2024, and represents the second-highest figure in the survey's history.

The variation across provinces is stark:

The report also found that the total wait from GP referral to treatment — which includes the MRI as one step — reached 28.6 weeks nationally, with neurosurgery patients waiting a median of 49.9 weeks from GP referral to treatment. For a patient with suspected neurological disease, a 52-week MRI wait in Prince Edward Island means that by the time imaging is complete, nearly a year has passed since the first symptom was reported.

United Kingdom: 6–18 Weeks, With Outliers Extending to Years

The NHS sets a target that no patient should wait more than six weeks for a diagnostic test, including MRI. In January 2025, approximately 6% of patients waited longer than six weeks — a significant improvement from the 26% figure recorded in January 2024, reflecting additional diagnostic capacity from Community Diagnostic Centres.

However, the median wait of 2.4 weeks cited by NHS England reflects all diagnostic tests combined and is weighted by high-volume, lower-complexity scans. For MRI specifically — which requires specialist interpretation and accounts for 30% of all diagnostic test volume — real-world waits in many NHS Trusts continue to run between 6 and 18 weeks for non-urgent referrals.

Freedom of Information data obtained by the Liberal Democrats revealed extreme outliers: at Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust, the longest recorded wait for an MRI was 914 days. These are not typical waits, but they are real ones — and they occur disproportionately in underfunded regional Trusts where scanner capacity has not kept pace with demand.

The UK has just 8.6 MRI scanners per million people, compared with the EU average of 12.4 and Germany's 32.5.

Australia: 16 Weeks Average, Significant State Variation

Australia's public MRI access situation is less comprehensively tracked than Canada's, but state-level data indicates that patients in South Australia waited an average of 16 weeks for public MRI appointments in 2024–25. The national picture is complicated by the MRI licensing system, under which Medicare rebates only apply to machines with a full licence — a policy constraint that limits scanner deployment relative to population need.

For elective surgery more broadly, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported a 2024–25 national median of 45 days, with 6% of patients waiting more than a year. Imaging waits, while not tracked with the same granularity, follow a similar pattern: manageable in metro Victoria or New South Wales, significantly longer in regional states and territories.

Beijing: 48 Hours

At Beijing Tiantan Hospital and Xuanwu Hospital — our two primary neurology partners — international patients coordinated through China MedPass receive their 3.0T MRI within 24–48 hours of arrival. The English radiology report follows within 24 hours of the scan. DICOM image data is provided on disc or via encrypted transfer on departure.

This is not a private clinic arrangement with a single scanner. Both hospitals are Grade 3A public hospitals — China's highest hospital classification — operating multiple current-generation 3.0T systems (Siemens Skyra/Vida, GE Premier) with dedicated neuroradiology teams. The throughput capacity of these institutions means that international patients, who represent a small fraction of total volume, can be scheduled without the queue pressure that governs appointment availability in the NHS or provincial Canadian systems.

The Cost Comparison