MRI near Moranbah, QLD

Moranbah does not have an MRI scanner. The nearest one is at Medical Imaging Department Mackay Base Hospital in Mackay, about 149 km away, roughly 2 hr 31 min by road. After that, the options are Queensland X-Ray Fourways Mackay in West Mackay (149 km) and Mackay Radiology in North Mackay (151 km).

Six practices within 200 km of Moranbah are accredited for MRI in total; the five above are the closest by straight-line distance from the centre of town.

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

To put 149 km in context: of the 1062 QLD towns we hold, 50 are further than Moranbah from a MRI service. It is a real trip, and worth planning as one.

149 km is a real trip, not a detail. Before you drive it, it is worth asking two things: whether you qualify for your state's patient travel assistance scheme, which exists for exactly this, and whether anything closer runs a visiting service — some regional hospitals do, on a roster we cannot see in the register.

Across Queensland, 140 practices are accredited for MRI and 71 of those are outside the capital. That is the arithmetic behind the distance above — MRI is not spread evenly, and Moranbah sits in one of the gaps.

Accreditation windows: Medical Imaging Department Mackay Base Hospital to 31 August 2027, Queensland X-Ray Fourways Mackay to 31 August 2026 and Mackay Radiology to 30 November 2027. 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 one lists 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.