Aside from de-coupling ED changes at Concordia and Seven Oaks hospitals, a report on health care wait times in Manitoba isn't changing the health minister's plan in terms of how the overall project will be timed out.

Kelvin Goertzen said his process has always been the same: listen to the experts.

"So with the transition team, as we were meeting before we went (through with) the changes at the Victoria and Misericordia... every day that I would meet with them I would say the same thing at the end of the meeting: 'is there anybody here who doesn't think we're ready? And if you don't think we're ready then speak up and tell me now because we won't go forward then,'" Goertzen told reporters at the Legislature this morning.

A major overhaul of the health care system in Winnipeg will eventually see the number of emergency departments in the city down to three, from six. The Wait Times Reduction Task Force report recommends decoupling, or staggering, the Concordia and Seven Oaks closures, as well as delaying the moves for further evaluation and planning. The report says a new emergency department at St. Boniface Hospital a high priority, calling its current capacity "a major constraint to a fully consolidated system."

Goertzen said the first phase of phase two is the expansion of Grace Hospital's emergency department, and St. Boniface was expanded by about 25 per cent in phase one. He said he acknowledged a need for long-term changes at St. B when Dr. James Peachey's report came out in April; he said he'd like to see planning on that start sooner rather than later. He says metrics on patient flow will continue to be monitored, and changes won't be made until the transition team feels it's a clinically sound decision that the system can handle.

The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority agrees with the de-coupling recommendation, but, while the overall project timeline is thusfar unchanged, the WRHA doesn't yet know which ED will close first, or when.

The wait times report also recommended no new MRIs were needed in the province, but rather, the ones we have need to be operated more efficiently -- 16 hours per day, every day, where appropriate. Despite that, Goertzen said this morning Dauphin will be getting an MRI machine.

He said it was a difficult decision, and credits Dauphin's MLA as the tipping point.

"In the end, I relied pretty heavily on Dauphin MLA Brad Michaleski, in terms of his view that the community had invested a lot, both financially and emotionally into the facility, and that they believe that they can work to get the utilization to the point that it will be a well-utilized machine," said Goertzen.

The building to house Dauphin's MRI is already built, and staff has already been trained.

Niverville has proposed buying an MRI privately and having the province pay for scans. Goertzen says he hasn't received a specific request to license an MRI, but he's open to looking at a private service. He says if the plan is to have government purchase the machine, that's a little bit different, as it then has to go through a tendering process.