As a Consultant Radiologist myself there are a number of things which stike me as strange in this story. Firstly the examination of choice here would have been CT scan which is much more readily available throughout the UK and would have shown the problem in minutes. I can't speak for your local hospital but GPs usually have access to urgent CT but not urgent MRI. It is easy in retrospect to see that more urgent action should have been taken but when there is such concern about a patient the GP usually discusses the need for urgent scan with the Radiologist or, failing this, arranges for the patient to be reviewed by a hospital specialist. If, after consideration, we think a scan is not justified we do offer the patient a choice of having it done privately but we only charge £200 for a private CT or MRI. The suggestion here was that the family was being asked to finance a clinically justified urgent scan to the tune of £700 and this would indeed be of concern. The refunding of the fee was correct in this circumstance but would be an interesting business plan for a private scanning company. Only charge if normal! Xavier