From the January/February 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


Carestream offers the DRX 2530C detector, and Fujifilm and Agfa are two more companies offering incubator-sized panels. Siemens currently has a smaller panel pending 510(k) approval.

The cost of doing business
“Customer expectations revolve around a series of concerns that include, in part: pricing, reliability, image quality, workflow convenience, dose, and ongoing support,” says Scott Milgrom, president of Radiology Solutions.

What gives DR the advantage over CR is its efficiency. “The big difference is the time saving,” says Pierre Niepel, director of the radiography and fluoroscopy segment at Siemens Healthcare. “If you go DR, you have the image instantly,” he says.



Yukio Sakai, vice president for R&D at the Samsung Health & Medical Business, shares a similar view. “The transition to DR from CR will also be driven by the advantages that DR offers in terms of throughput,” he says. “CR remains relevant in the short-term for cost-conscious buyers. However, over time we would expect the market to trend toward DR.”

Since DR doesn’t require handling and processing of a cassette, patient throughput is considerably faster. That increased throughput can be a substantial benefit for busy facilities, translating to a net gain over the life of a DR system compared to a CR system.

A rough comparison to cost considerations when choosing between CR and DR was shared by Werner. He says if a facility’s patient volume is great enough to require three CR systems to accommodate the need, then one DR system instead could be justified. “You have three times the amount of equipment and three times the amount of recurring costs with CR as you would have with DR,” he says. “Consider that some of the lower CR units are 20 plate per hour, 30 plate per hour units, which means they’re taking up to two minutes to scan a single image.”

CR has had its fair share of upgrades and updates even in recent years. “CR is much better than it was even five years ago and at a much better price point,” says George Curley, senior sales marketing manager in the imaging business unit with Agfa Healthcare. “A cost of a multi-plate CR is about where the cost of a hospital-grade single plate was just a few years ago. The CR detectors are smaller now, faster,” he says.

For those facilities able to justify the higher costs associated with DR, there’s still another decision to make—and it’s another cost consideration. “Cesium detectors provide less exposure, less radiation than Gadolinium,” says Brad Hellwig, administrative director for medical imaging at Crouse Hospital. “But Cesium is also more fragile.”

January/February 2014 Magazine

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