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Three Practice Merger | Home X-Ray Team
February 7, 2022
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Together with
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“Gaps in cancer screening mean too many in the United States are unnecessarily enduring aggressive treatment or dying from cancers that could have been prevented or detected at earlier, more easily treated stages.”
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An assessment from the US President’s Cancer Panel.
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Three independent radiology practices just merged with the goal of better serving their shared client, Trinity Health, representing an interesting example of how private rad groups can adapt to hospital and practice consolidation.
Becoming AIA – Michigan’s Huron Valley Radiology (54 radiologists), Indiana’s X-Ray Consultants (11 rads), and Connecticut’s Naugatuck Valley Radiological Associates (11 rads) will now become Advanced Imaging Alliance (AIA). Although technically a corporation, AIA is wholly owned by the groups’ physician shareholders, and will continue to operate as three separate divisions.
Trinity’s Consolidation – Trinity Health itself was created by the 2000 merger of the Holy Cross Health System (Indiana) and Mercy Health Services (Michigan), before acquiring St. Mary’s Hospital (Connecticut) in 2015 and eventually expanding to 89 hospitals in 25 states. Trinity’s expansion is what motivated the three groups to merge, allowing them to provide “a single level” of service for their shared client.
Consolidation Options – Mergers like this could represent a viable option for rad groups looking to remain independent and competitive, allowing them to better support multi-state hospital clients, while giving them workforce advantages (more subspecialists, shared overnight coverage) and better administrative / IT scale.
The Takeaway
It appears that the trends towards multi-state hospital systems and expanding PE-backed radiology groups are here to stay, creating challenges for private radiology practices that have thrived on local relationships. That doesn’t mean that we’ll see a major trend towards three-practice mergers, but these mergers might make sense for some practices in similar situations.
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Novarad’s Simple & Secure Patient Engagement Solution
Evaluating your patient engagement strategy? Check out this Imaging Wire Show featuring Novarad’s Paul Shumway for a great conversation about how new technologies are helping imaging providers safely and securely improve patient engagement.
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Us2.ai’s Echo Evidence
Have more echo studies than sonographers? See how Us2.ai was able to classify, segment, and annotate echocardiographic videos with similar accuracy as expert sonographers.
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- X-Ray Response Team: A new Radiography study highlighted the Northumbria NHS Trust’s X-ray Response Team (a paramedic, radiographer, emergency clinician, and 7lb Fujifilm X-ray system), created to reduce unnecessary hospital visits by performing X-rays at patient homes. Over a 7-month proof-of-concept period, the XRT performed 54 calls (84% at patient homes, 80yr average age), reducing hospital visits by 50% and receiving 100% positive patient feedback. This study is particularly notable given the care-at-home momentum we’re seeing in both the US and UK.
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- Patients’ Quality Preference: A new JACR study suggests that most potential patients (n = 1,025 online respondents) wouldn’t sacrifice imaging exam quality for lower out-of-pocket costs (OOPC), unless they believe that their case is mild. In a hypothetical severe back pain MRI scenario, the majority of respondents preferred to pay higher OOPCs ($400 vs. $50) to go imaging centers that produced more accurate results (65.8%), were recommended by their provider (63.9%), or had a higher star rating (80.1%, 4.5 vs. 2.5 stars). However, there was no statistical difference in respondents’ quality / cost preference for mild back pain.
- $190B in Health Tech Losses: Healthcare strategist Air Gottlieb recently outlined how publicly traded health tech startups have had their market caps shrink by a combined $190B since their 2021 peaks, a decline of over 73%. Gottlieb predicts that these companies’ declines could cause many healthcare startups to reevaluate their IPO timing until market conditions improve. The reduced valuations also make it likely that we’ll start to see more consolidation as larger healthcare businesses look to take advantage of low stock prices.
- Koning’s Crowdfunding: Breast CT startup Koning Health completed a $2.6M crowdfunding campaign (total funding now $16M) that it will use to support its ongoing FDA breast screening trial and develop new clinical applications.
- 3D Representations: A new study out of Switzerland shared new reasons to be optimistic about representing imaging exams in 3D-native formats. The researchers had 20 physicians from various specialties (cardiology, oral surgery, orthopedic surgery, and radiology) assess three 3D-represented CT exams (3D printed, VR glasses, and 3D display). Although 3D displays arguably came out on top (44% said it would change treatment plans, 8.2 / 10 avg. score), the physicians also positively assessed VR glasses (33% & 8.25) and 3D printing (33% & 7.2). Feedback was particularly strong among physicians with less than 10 years of experience.
- Medicine’s Great Resignation: A recent AMA survey of 20k healthcare workers found that 1 in 5 doctors are planning to leave the profession within the next two years, while nearly 1 in 3 intend to reduce their work hours. Burnout, fear of COVID-19 exposure, and workload were predictors of intent to leave, although workers that felt valued by their organization were less likely to report an upcoming career change.
- President’s Cancer Panel: The US President’s Cancer Panel recently detailed the country’s cancer screening challenges (low participation, COVID declines, inequality, late diagnoses) and presented four goals to improve screening. The panel proposed: (1) Improving cancer screening communications, (2) Supporting equitable screening access, (3) Allowing more healthcare team members to drive screening participation and perform risk assessments, (4) Creating health IT that promotes risk assessments and screening.
- DLIR Improves Prostate DW-MRI: A Japanese team shared the first research showing that deep learning image reconstruction improves diffusion-weighted image quality for prostate exams. The researchers reconstructed prostate DW-MRI (3T) exams from 60 patients with biopsy-proven cancer, with and without DLIR. Using DWI at 1000 sec/mm2 as an example, they found that the DLIR exams had a higher average signal-to-noise ratio (38.7 vs. 17.8), contrast-to-noise ratio (18.4 vs. 7.4), and qualitative image quality score (4.8 vs. 4.0).
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- See how adopting ClearRead CT allowed Michigan’s Regional Medical Imaging’s radiologists to complete their chest CT reads faster and more accurately in this Riverain Technologies case study.
- Working out your AI business case? Check out this helpful Blackford Analysis post detailing how to create your AI Value Matrix based on your organizational objectives and value indicators.
- See how GE Healthcare’s AI-ready PACS will help radiology unleash the promise of AI.
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