Radiology’s Greatest Opportunity—and Biggest Challenge

By Bill Pickart

Multiple factors have coalesced recently to create the ideal environment for improved radiology group–hospital alignment, including regulatory upheavals, economic pressure, and changes in reimbursement. The alignment pressures have resulted in much discussion concerning group consolidation. Frequently, this consolidation takes one of three forms: merger, merger with conditions, and outright acquisition.

A fourth option is possible, though, and it will enable practices to maintain the autonomy and independence that they value, while allowing them to take advantage of the economies of scale necessary for survival in today’s market: networked collaboration.

In a networked-collaboration model, regional groups of practices form loose affiliations with one another that allow them to continue to function as independent practice/business entities, while pooling their resources and sharing subspecialty expertise. These radiology-group networks can leverage their size in payor, vendor, and hospital negotiations, and the can work together to serve hospitals and health systems (instead of competing for their business).

Click here for more

Practice–Hospital Alignment in Radiology: What Makes a Relationship Work?

By Cat Vasko

Radiology-practice alignment with hospitals and health systems has never been a simple proposition, and recent years have seen the severance of long-standing ties between hospitals and the practices that served them. Simultaneously, however, conditions in the US health-care market have made alignment between the two parties a more promising proposition than ever before—if certain conditions can be met.

“There is a level of alignment where radiology groups have a seat at the hospital’s leadership table. There are notable groups across the country that have achieved that status—and there are notable groups that have not.”

—Douglas Smith

Douglas Smith, managing partner for the Strategic Positioning & Consulting business group of Integrated Medical Partners (IMP), notes that commoditization has long been a fear in the imaging industry. As the market for radiology services matures, more competition drives prices downward, and (the reasoning goes) customers are unable to distinguish between providers on any basis other than price. With the growing trend toward health-care–delivery integration, however, radiology practices have an opportunity to sidestep the commoditization risk entirely.

“If we talk about radiology-group alignment with hospitals and health systems, and the mechanization of that alignment to meet the strategic and tactical imperatives of the health system, that’s where we’re seeing radiology avoid the label of being commoditized,” Douglas Smith says. “There is a level of alignment where radiology groups have a seat at the hospital’s leadership table. There are notable groups across the country that have achieved that status—and there are notable groups that have not, and are, therefore, left on the sidelines of the emerging health-care space.”

Characteristics of Aligned Practices

No two aligned relationships are exactly alike, of course, but there are some common characteristics that Smith and his colleagues Bill Pickart, Bob Kebbekus, David Smith, Tim Dyer, and Steve Goodman highlighted in a roundtable discussion on how radiology practices can successfully achieve tenable alignment with their hospital and health-system partners.

Click here for more