DM: Those are the broad issues; now what about micro-level trends?

RD: We always specialized in CT and MRI so we know that market very well. One of the areas we could grow is picking up additional [customer] sites organically. Another growth opportunity is to spread geographically to wider territories. By bringing Karl on board [former Siemens executive Karl Berland, new VP of sales and marketing] we are looking at opening up 12 new territories in the Western and Northeastern U.S., as well as U.S. regions we already cover in 2010. We also want to expand our offerings to include multi-vendor services. Right now we are very strong in supporting GE equipment. But the trend this coming year will be to better support customers using Philips and Siemens with the same type of service that we deliver for GE equipment. We see a huge growth potential in 2010. We are well positioned to pick up those new customers.


DM: That multi-vendor model will help you compete with OEMs?

RD: It's not that we're trying to go up against the OEMs, because some of the OEMs are our customers. We provide parts sales, CT and MR services and rent mobiles. Our model is really to be good at what we do--CT and MR--and be able to offer those services not only to OEMs who are in the multi-vendor, multi-modality services like asset management, but also to provide support and services to independent asset management companies and even our competitors in some of our offerings in other businesses areas.

Our sales and marketing focus has always been to provide our services to hospitals and large medical centers and luminary big accounts. But we also do strong business with asset management companies, other independent service companies and some imaging centers. They are all our customers. We have a good mix so that if, for example, imaging centers are affected because of the DRA, it doesn't hurt the company as much because we are very well diversified with our customer base.

DM: You mentioned asset management, what about risk management?

RD: Risk management is a program we started offering over the last year and a half. What we are finding is that the days of customers wanting to have one flat cost and not take any of the risk are fading away. Customers today are willing to take more risk to save costs, yet cap that exposure in case of catastrophic failures.

DM: In all our reporting on DOTmed lately, there's a clear trend toward service as growing business driver, as opposed to sales.

RD: For us, service is our core business. We created our company to provide service. Parts sales is a piece of that. The equipment sales side came of necessity to keep growing our service business. There are companies out there who strictly do equipment sales and make their livelihood on sales. As the market cycles, when the economy is good, there's a lot of money available, then customers tend to purchase more equipment, and equipment sales companies do well. Mobile companies do well in good times because customers need mobiles for interim replacement of equipment.

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