We will lead with the single most useful sentence in Ontario health care, because most people go their entire lives without being told: “Requisitions for insured services are valid at any Ontario location providing the same service. Patients have the choice of where to receive their services and are not limited to the location that is printed on the requisition form.”

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That is from the Government of Ontario. It means the facility name pre-printed on your requisition is your doctor’s office habit, not a binding assignment. If somewhere else does the same OHIP-covered exam and can see you in three days instead of three months, you can take the form there. No new requisition, no permission, no phone call to your doctor.

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The rest of this article explains the imaging wait times Ontario actually publishes, what OHIP covers, and why that opening sentence matters so much, because the difference between facilities in the same region is far larger than most people would guess.

Quick Facts: Imaging Wait Times and OHIP Coverage

Ontario assigns imaging a priority level from 1 to 4, with targets of 24 hours, 48 hours, 10 days and 28 days. As of June 2026, urgent CT averaged one day while non-urgent CT averaged 79 days and non-urgent MRI averaged 101 days. Ontario publishes no wait time data at all for ultrasound, X-ray or mammography. Diagnostic imaging is covered by OHIP when medically necessary and ordered by a physician or nurse practitioner, and charging patients for insured services is illegal in Ontario.

Ontario does not run one queue. It runs four, and a radiologist decides which one you are in.

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When your requisition arrives at a facility, a radiologist assigns a priority level based on your symptoms, your history and clinical guidelines. Not on when you called, and not on how anxious you sound.

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Priority 1, emergent: immediately threatening to life or limb, target 24 hours. Priority 2, urgent: needed to diagnose or change your treatment plan, target 48 hours. Priority 3, semi-urgent: needed sooner than routine, target 10 days. Priority 4, non-urgent: routine, target 28 days.

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The clock Ontario measures runs from the date the order is received by the facility to the date the scan happens. Note what that excludes: the time between your symptom starting and your doctor’s appointment, and the time between that appointment and the requisition being sent. Your lived wait is usually longer than the published one.

Ontario publishes wait times for CT and MRI only. No provincial figure exists for ultrasound, X-ray or mammography.

The imaging wait times Ontario reported for June 2026 were as follows.

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CT: Priority 2 averaged 1 day with 96 per cent within target. Priority 3 averaged 27 days against a 10-day target, with 45 per cent within target. Priority 4 averaged 79 days against a 28-day target, with 35 per cent within target and a 90th percentile of 182 days.

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MRI: Priority 2 averaged 2 days with 76 per cent within target. Priority 3 averaged 27 days with 43 per cent within target. Priority 4 averaged 101 days with only 20 per cent within target and a 90th percentile of 214 days.

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Two things stand out. Urgent imaging in Ontario works. If a radiologist flags your scan as Priority 2, you are almost certainly getting it inside 48 hours, and the system does what it is meant to do at the acute end.

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Routine imaging is where it breaks down. Only one in five non-urgent MRIs and about one in three non-urgent CTs happen within the 28-day target. And look at the 90th percentile: one in ten non-urgent MRI patients waits 214 days, which is seven months. The average of 101 days badly understates what happens to the unluckiest tenth.

Here is York Region as of June 2026, for non-urgent exams.

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Mackenzie Health Richmond Hill: CT averaged 39 days with a 90th percentile of 89 days; MRI averaged 42 days with a 90th percentile of 77 days.

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Mackenzie Health Cortellucci Vaughan: CT averaged 64 days with a 90th percentile of 182 days; MRI averaged 41 days with a 90th percentile of 85 days.

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Southlake Regional, Newmarket: CT averaged 114 days with a 90th percentile of 188 days; MRI averaged 102 days with a 90th percentile of 136 days.

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Against a provincial average of 79 days for CT and 101 days for MRI, both Mackenzie Health sites are running well ahead. Southlake, twenty minutes up the road, is running at or behind it. Same province, same funding formula, same priority definition, and for a routine CT a 75-day difference depending on which name was pre-printed at the top of your form.

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Nobody is doing anything wrong. Facilities differ in scanner count, staffing, inpatient and emergency load, and referral catchment. But if you do not know you are allowed to choose, you inherit whichever queue your doctor’s office defaults to. You can look up current waits for any Ontario facility yourself through Ontario Health’s public wait times tool.

Here is something important, and it is the reason to be sceptical of any number you see quoted online for ultrasound or X-ray waits in Ontario.

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Ontario does not publish wait time data for ultrasound, X-ray or general mammography. The province is explicit that the imaging wait times it tracks are adult CT, adult MRI, paediatric CT and paediatric MRI. That is the entire list.

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So when a website tells you the average ultrasound wait in Ontario is a given number of weeks, there is no authoritative source behind that figure.

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What we can tell you honestly is our own booking window. At King City Diagnostic Imaging, X-ray is walk-in with no appointment at all, Monday to Friday 9 to 5 and Saturday 9 to 4. Ultrasound, mammography, bone density, FibroScan, vascular studies and cardiology typically book within one to two business days, with same-day slots often available. That is not a provincial statistic, it is simply what our schedule looks like.

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There is a structural reason community clinics tend to move faster on these exams. A hospital imaging department is simultaneously serving its emergency department, its inpatients and its outpatient queue, and the first two will always, correctly, take priority. A community diagnostic centre has no emergency department competing for the same technologist.

The imaging wait times Ontario reports are worth understanding, because they are not the fault of the person answering the phone.

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Between 2006 and 2023, annual CT volumes in Canada grew roughly 90 per cent, from about 3.4 million scans to 6.4 million. MRI volumes grew about 117 per cent, from roughly 1.0 million to 2.2 million. Imaging has become central to how nearly every condition is diagnosed and monitored, and demand has grown accordingly.

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Capacity has not kept up on either axis. Around a third of Canada’s CT scanners and 37 per cent of MRI machines are more than ten years old. And the Canadian Association of Radiologists identifies the binding constraint not as machines but as people, meaning technologists to run the scanners and radiologists to read the studies. A scanner that runs twelve hours a day instead of eight does not need new capital, it needs staff.

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National data shows median wait times rose by 15 days for MRI and 3 days for CT between 2019 and 2024. Ontario performs better than the national median on both, but better than average and acceptable are different standards.

Diagnostic imaging is an insured service in Ontario when it is medically necessary and ordered by a physician or nurse practitioner. That includes X-ray, ultrasound, mammography, CT, MRI, bone mineral density and nuclear medicine. You pay nothing: not a co-pay, not a facility fee, not an administrative charge.

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Since July 1, 2023, nurse practitioners in Ontario can order X-rays, ultrasound, CT and MRI for any region of the body as OHIP-insured services. Some patients are still told otherwise, and that is outdated.

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The one self-referral pathway is screening mammography. If you are 40 to 74, hold a valid Ontario health card and have no breast symptoms, you can book a screening mammogram through the Ontario Breast Screening Program with no requisition at all.

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What OHIP does not cover comes down to one clear rule: OHIP covers services that are medically necessary, and it does not cover services requested by someone other than you and your clinician. That category is called third-party services, and common examples include imaging or reports requested by an insurance company, exams required by an employer such as pre-employment screening or functional ability assessments, imaging for legal proceedings or ordered by a court, requirements set by an educational institution, and copies of medical records for external parties. OHIP also does not cover services deemed experimental, or care for people without valid Ontario coverage.

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If you are having imaging for one of these reasons, the facility must tell you the cost in advance. Ontario requires licensed centres to post an up-to-date list of prices for all uninsured services in a visible place and on their website.

This deserves its own section, because patients are occasionally charged things they should not be and do not know they can push back.

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Ontario’s position on licensed community diagnostic centres is that it is illegal for centres to charge you for services insured by OHIP, to charge you for preferential access to insured services, or to charge you facility costs such as overhead or operating fees relating to insured services. The province also states that when receiving care at a centre, you must be given the option to receive only OHIP-insured services.

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The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario reinforces this on the physician side. The legislative backing is the Commitment to the Future of Medicare Act, which prohibits both extra-billing and paid preferential access, so queue-jumping for money is not legal in Ontario.

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If you are ever charged for an insured service, report it to the Ministry at protectpublichealthcare@ontario.ca or 1-888-662-6613. Ontario’s stated commitment is that where it finds someone has paid for an insured service, the full amount of the unauthorised payment is returned to that person.

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Some context on community clinics, because the word “private” gets used loosely. Facilities like ours are licensed under the Integrated Community Health Services Centres Act, 2023, which replaced the Independent Health Facilities Act in September 2023. There are over 900 licensed centres in Ontario and the majority provide diagnostic imaging. They have been part of the publicly funded system for about thirty years, are held to standards set by Accreditation Canada, are inspected every four years with results posted publicly, and fall under the jurisdiction of Ontario’s Patient Ombudsman. You use your health card and you pay nothing.

1. Ask to be sent somewhere with a shorter queue. Check Ontario Health’s wait times tool, then tell your doctor’s office where you would rather go. Your requisition is valid anywhere that offers the service.

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2. Get on the cancellation list, at more than one facility. Cancellations happen constantly and short-notice slots go to whoever picks up the phone. This is the highest-yield item on this list and it costs you one phone call.

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3. Ask about evening, early morning and weekend appointments. Many facilities run extended hours that never get offered unless you ask. Our Saturday hours exist for exactly this reason.

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4. Say yes to travelling. Fifteen minutes of driving frequently buys weeks. If you can get to King City from Richmond Hill or Aurora, you have widened your options considerably.

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5. Make sure the requisition is complete and legible. Missing clinical history is a real cause of delay, because a radiologist assigning priority needs to know why the test was ordered. A form that says “pain” is triaged differently from one that says “three weeks of right upper quadrant pain, query gallstones.”

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6. If your symptoms change, tell your doctor. Priority is not fixed. A worsening picture can be re-triaged upward, but only if someone knows about it.

What is the average wait for an ultrasound in Ontario? There is no published figure. Ontario tracks wait times for adult and paediatric CT and MRI only. Ask individual facilities for their booking window; ours is typically one to two business days.

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How long is the wait for an MRI in Ontario? As of June 2026, about 2 days for urgent, 27 days average for semi-urgent, and 101 days average for non-urgent, with one in ten non-urgent patients waiting 214 days or more.

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Does OHIP cover medical imaging? Yes. X-ray, ultrasound, mammography, CT, MRI, bone density and nuclear medicine are all insured when medically necessary and ordered by a physician or nurse practitioner.

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Do I need a referral for imaging in Ontario? Yes for almost everything. The exceptions are screening mammography through the OBSP and self-referral into the Ontario Lung Screening Program for eligible individuals.

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Can I choose where to get my imaging done? Yes. Ontario states directly that requisitions for insured services are valid at any Ontario location providing that service.

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Can I pay to skip the line? No. Charging for OHIP-insured services or preferential access is illegal in Ontario. Choosing a facility with a shorter wait, however, is entirely permitted.

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Why is a community clinic faster than a hospital? A hospital imaging department serves its emergency department and inpatients first, correctly. A community diagnostic centre has no emergency department competing for the same technologist and the same scanner hour.

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What if I am charged for an insured service? Contact the Ministry at protectpublichealthcare@ontario.ca or 1-888-662-6613.

King City Diagnostic Imaging is at Unit 1, Building H, 1700 King Road, King City, ON L7B 0N1, with free surface parking.

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Walk-in X-ray runs Monday to Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Appointments run Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Closed statutory holidays.

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We serve King City, Richmond Hill, Aurora, Newmarket, Vaughan, Maple, Oak Ridges, Nobleton, Kleinburg, Schomberg and Bolton. You can book online, contact us, or see our full range of services.

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Wait time figures reflect Ontario Health reporting for June 2026 and will change over time. General information on coverage is available on the Government of Ontario’s website.

X-ray is walk-in six days a week. Most other exams book within one to two business days.