Okay, the Atlantis Worldwide hospitality suite was rockin’, complete with seafood bar, a great musician and endless cosmopolitans. The dueling pianos at Bongo’s did get a little competitive. And who didn’t love the mojitos? As anyone who attended the annual Health Connect Partners Radiology and Imaging Conference in Miami in May can tell you, the conference was a huge success in many ways. It offered a great balance of networking opportunities, industry learning and sharing, panel discussions and FUN.
If you attended the panel that featured three heavy hitters from industry-leading imaging center groups, you walked away with a real understanding of the challenges, opportunities and market dynamics in our industry today. The panel featured Greg Flittner from the Center for Diagnostic Imagine in Minneapolis, Richard Divers from MedQuest in Alpharetta, Georgia and Creighton Cook from Outpatient Imaging Associates in Nashville.
CDI’s Flittner believes hospitals will continue to grow and dominate the market, while payers will continue to reduce hospital reimbursements as a means to close the gap between physician practice and Independent Diagnostic Testing facilities rates. Payers will continue to steer patients to lost-cost providers. Market consolidation is also expected to continue as smaller DIC owners who can’t expand will either sell their centers or close their doors.
MedQuest’s Divers believes hospitals will continue to acquire imagining facilities. He also believe there will continue to be rate pressure for diagnostic imaging and there will be an increased focus on improved utilization of existing assets and volume to make up for margin loss.
OIA’s Cook believes that radiology business managers will become more aggressive regarding independent lower costs and increasing costs of payer referrals to hospitals. He sees a self-referral decline in an effort to reduce costs, but believe that quality imaging providers will always have a place in radiology. There will also be an increase in the importance of transparencies, especially regarding reimbursements vs. higher costs for hospitals on blended technical reviews per procedure.
While this is just scratching the surface on the panel discussion, it’s easy to see that the focus in the future will be on reducing costs for digital imaging and maximizing reimbursements, in order to remain competitive. The good news is, Atlantis Worldwide can help you deliver excellent imaging capability and system service, while reducing capital and operating costs. Our ability to identify high quality imaging equipment quickly and provide excellent installation can expand either hospital or independent imaging services. This provides better positioning for facilities to address needs of the market, whether hospital, patient or referral based.
Our next blog will dig deeper into the general atmosphere and comments made by many of the attendees concerning the environment for imaging in the future. But don’t forget to mark your calendars for next year’s convention in Atlanta. We’re already making plans for an even better celebration in the hospitality suite next year! Any suggestions?
You can download photos from the conference at our Facebook page, too.
Meet the author: Vikki Harmonay
