From the December 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


Koers says he’s recently seen an increase in the number of cardiovascular groups interested in taking their business away from the hospital setting and starting up independent imaging centers. “In these situations, our interim cath labs are an integral part of their plans, an interim solution that can be delivered and operational within weeks, with the ability to start seeing patients, and producing a revenue stream, while plans are being made to budget for and install a permanent in-house lab at a later date,” Koers says.

Schmidt says expansion in the market comes from a combination of fiscal constraints as well as the need for capacity and access. “For instance, if a facility needs women’s health, maybe they don’t have the time or the budget to build a completely new clinic,” Schmidt says. “DMS Health Technologies can assist by providing a trailer with a complete women’s health facility — everything from laboratory services to behavioral counseling, to bone density screenings. And if we can share the trailer with other facilities in the area, we can offer women’s health services to a whole community, in local neighborhoods, for a fraction of the cost of building a fixed site. We can bring the clinic to the patient, creating a standard of care that is both comfortable and convenient.”


Dave Stewart, vice president of sales and marketing for Shared Imaging, says the market is fairly equally divided among CT and MR, with a slight increase in the utilization of PET/CT. “Health care providers are required to function in a rapidly changing environment,” Stewart says. “Some of our clients look at mobile imaging technology as an alternative to the traditional cash purchase model, while others look at it as a complement to the systems they have installed inside their facilities.”

Varied solutions
Some facilities rent only the equipment, but the mobile imaging companies can also provide technologists, patient coordinators and drivers to move the equipment. “Most hospitals and groups we work with simply rent the mobile lab and staff it on their own,” Koers says. “Occasionally, we’ll partner with a startup in a remote area that needs help finding staff, and for these folks we’ll put them in touch with one of our industry partners who specializes in technical staff.”

Business is split between short-term rentals, when a facility is undergoing a construction project or is upgrading systems, and long-term arrangements of a few years or more. Hockel and Stewart say the majority of their clients use a long-term solution, while Koers says his company’s business is split 50/50 between short- and long-term rentals. “Our mobile lab trailers — cath, angio, CT — are short-term and are best suited for a few months during an equipment changeout,” Koers says. “For long-term solutions, we offer a larger modular lab that is a minimum of 50 percent larger than a mobile trailer with direct ground-level entry that can easily be connected to a facility.”

December 2016 Magazine

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