MRI near Forster, NSW

If you need MRI, it will not be in Forster — nothing here is accredited for it. The nearest one is at Manning Hospital in Taree, about 31 km away, roughly 35 minutes by road. After that, the options are Lumus Imaging Mayo Private Hospital in Taree (34 km) and Hunter Imaging Salamander Bay in Salamander Bay (72 km).

There are 37 MRI practices within 200 km of Forster altogether — the five listed are simply the nearest.

All of them are on the Australian Government's list of Medicare-eligible MRI locations (last updated 17 February 2026), so a Medicare rebate is possible for scans done there. Whether your scan attracts one depends on the item your referral asks for and on who wrote it — GPs can request a limited set of MRI items and specialists can request more.

Locally, Forster is covered for x-ray, ultrasound and CT. A referral for one of those can be done here: everything Forster has.

To put 31 km in context: of the 1544 NSW towns we hold, 193 are further than Forster from a MRI service. It is a real trip, and worth planning as one.

New South Wales has 204 MRI practices in total, 84 of them outside the capital. The machines cluster where the population is, which is why the nearest one to Forster is where it is.

Accreditation windows: Manning Hospital to 30 June 2027, Lumus Imaging Mayo Private Hospital to 31 August 2027 and Hunter Imaging Salamander Bay to 30 November 2026. We drop a modality the day its accreditation lapses, so if it is listed above it is current.

Of the five practices listed, all publish a phone number, all have a website and three list opening hours. A phone call before you travel is worth it: a practice can be accredited for a scan and still not run it daily.