From the December 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


Getting the OEMs to play ball
“The fleets are aging, getting miles, rusting, hitting walls and getting damaged — a lot of stuff gets worn out and gets thrown away at some point,” says Vartanian. Oxford refurbishes some of those trailers back to their original specifications in order to get them back on the market with more modern technology.

Shared Imaging’s Rocha points out the engineering and regulatory hurdles that the manufacturers face in putting systems on wheels as a major deterrent, but if the market demand continues to grow, he speculates they may have to devote more energy to meeting it. “Around 2002 the whole market was putting out about 200 systems per year, but around 2009 that dropped to 10-12 units per year for the entire industry” says Bachman.
“If we can get 50 or 60 new-build units in the U.S. market next year, that would be a good year.” “The mobile industry has changed because it’s extremely expensive to get into the business,” says Geoff Smith. “Not only the cost of having the right people and developing the designs, but you also need certification and a lot of the vendors now just don’t do certifications anymore.”

Vartanian says the current output is a “trickle” compared to what it was nine or so years ago. The recession had everything to do with that, and as other countries have increasingly recognized the value of mobile imaging, the domestic fleet has further thinned.

For Philip Jacobus, the president of DOTmed.com and Owen Kane Holdings, as well as a board member of Diagnostic Treatment Centers in Russia, the international demand for mobile trailers represented a unique business opportunity. He says that between 2003 and 2014 he shipped over 100 mobile MR units to Russia. “If there was a mobile trailer out there for sale, we would buy it, refurbish it and reuse it in Russia,” says Jacobus. “However, as a result of the problems in Ukraine, the sanctions in Russia, and the lower price of oil, that market has dramatically dropped off.”

“Mobiles are being dispersed from our country, going out all over the world, and not being replaced by the manufacturers right now — which all adds up to more demand than supply,” says Vartanian. As the trailers in the U.S. grow older, they present new challenges. “In some cases you have to upgrade the trailer to meet new weight distributions or other different requirements,” says Rocha. “In a case like that you have to either go through the expense of refurbishing the unit or else buy a new trailer.”

If the trailer still meets Department of Transportation requirements and satisfies clinical needs, however, Shared Imaging has programs to get the vehicles back in top form and looking good, which is a legitimate consideration in the era of patient satisfaction ratings. “We do a lot of refurbishing of existing units, the fleets that are owned and maintained by Alliance HealthCare and Insight Imaging,” says Bachman of Advanced Mobility, adding that his company rarely ventures into the broker market, but will refurbish for a customer who chooses to go in that direction.

December 2015 Magazine

Read more stories from the December 2015 issue

Mobile Imaging Homepage