From the January 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine

All-inclusive pricing
Budget constraints have become all-too-familiar territory for hospitals and health care facilities, but OEMs are apparently getting the message, because more of them are offering multi-year service plans included in the price of new capital equipment.

For example, Siemens was touting the included two years of service, in addition to its standard one-year warranty, available on its new SOMATOM go. CT platform and its MAGNETOM Sempra 1.5 Tesla MR system (both are awaiting FDA clearance and were unveiled at the show).
Similarly, Hitachi is offering five years of total support on its 64/128-slice CT equipment. “We’re able to go into a community hospital and say this is more economical and you won’t have surprises,” said Mark Silverman, Hitachi’s director of CT marketing. “It won’t be that the X-ray tube burned out and you now have to spend $40,000 on something you weren’t expecting.”

These kinds of extended commitments between OEMs and providers echo the managed equipment service contracts we explored in our August magazine, where Altaf Stationwala, president and CEO of Ontario, Canada's Mackenzie Health discussed the benefits of his hospital's $300 million, 18-year MES contract with Philips. “We were less worried about the specific MR displayed at RSNA and more concerned about the longer-term partnership with a vendor that could help us equip the brand-new hospital,” said Stationwala.

Value-based care in the Trump era?
Within days of Donald Trump being elected the next U.S. President, (and just weeks before RSNA) Siemens announced its plans to make a public offering on its Healthineers business. In comments to the press, Siemens leadership acknowledged Trump's apparent commitment to infrastructure as a possible silver-lining of his upcoming presidency.

Still, most RSNA attendees and presenters couldn’t pinpoint exactly how a Trump administration will affect the health care industry in general, and radiology in particular — especially as the President-elect’s promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare are still just ideas. But there was certainty that the health care landscape would change in meaningful way.

During a session on the transition to value-based imaging, moderator Dr. James Whitfill, chief medical officer at Scottsdale Health Partners, a physician-led clinical integration network and ACO in Arizona, said he saw a continued shift away from volume-based reimbursement.

January 2017 Magazine

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