by
Sean Ruck, Contributing Editor | November 04, 2014
From the August 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Still, McCann says that the area where he’s noticing significant growth for the sector is within the acute care setting and with the larger networks that are starting to be able to be serviced through the ACO act.“With that, the affiliates owned by IDNs or health systems are getting attached to licensing groups and where they may have been a standalone physician group, they’re now being held to the same standards to mirror what the hospital is doing. The Joint Commission is going to look for that documentation. ”
Long-term benefits rather than short term profits
BC Technical’s executive vice president, Ken Smith, believes his company offers two big advantages compared to many OEM options in the market. According to Smith, BC Technical has low overhead and significant flexibility. Low overhead means less operating costs to pass on to customers, while the better flexibility means field service personnel can make decisions on the fly getting customers what they need quickly.
On the in-house front, Smith says they don’t compete, but are instead there as support. They can step in to offer assistance especially on systems that the in-house techs don’t get a chance to work with often.
Rounding out the service options, in comparison to other third parties, Smith considers BC Technical somewhere between OEM and ISO. The company has relationships will asset managers in large institutions across the country as well as with all the major OEMs. “We’re really the only true nationwide ISO for PET, Molecular Imaging, MR, CT. So we have the scale and we have capital, backed by one of the largest private equity firms in the country,” Smith says.
BC Technical specializes in molecular imaging, CT and MR in their three facilities. The company also does some field training and multi-vendor service training.
“Some people look at training as if they’re training they’re competitors,” Smith says. “But we look at it as a partnership — we understand we’ll train and it will take some business away from us as things are taken in-house, but we can be there to provide parts or tech support. If they have a person leave, we can step in and fill in until they’re staffed back up.”
Smith’s philosophy is focused on the long-term. “If you’re around the industry long enough, you see the ebb and flow —in-house gaining a lot of traction, asset management gaining traction,” he says. “We’rein a consolidation mode. Imaging centers are consolidating or going out of business. We’ll see a lot of that in service too. I think we’re leading the way; we’ve purchased, I think, 11 companies over the past two or three years. Last year alone it was four or five companies. Our intent is to finish another three to five acquisitions before the end of the year.”