I suspect this guy actually had an echocardiogram ordered, and the press doesn’t know the difference. Echo can sometimes be hard to get, and Moncton isn’t a teeming metropolis-what’s more, it’s a couple of hours away from the largest tertiary-care centre in the province, which tends to suck away cardiologists and echo techs. Moncton’s also a little harder to staff sometimes because there is such a large french population that being bilingual is pretty much a job requirement there.

Three months is awhile to wait, but since we’re not immune to the ordering of “medically nonindicated” echos (”sounds like a clearly innocent murmur to me, better check it out”/patient has stable aortic stenosis for years, no symptoms-better get regular echo done to watch for progression), I can imagine many situations where 3 months isn’t really a hardship.