Wayde Keeling, President of Lone Star X-Ray Services, describes the portable X-ray market as stable because all health care facilities need one. He believes, "customers need to realize that the older portables are being classified by the OEM as obsolete and they need to upgrade to spend their money wisely." Keeling says DR plates and displays are expensive but, "although the price is quite high, many customers opt to keep their CR plates for mobile exams for now and are planning to someday covert to the DR plate." Keeling offers preventive maintenance and battery replacements most commonly and deals with GE equipment most frequently.




"Portable X-ray, in my opinion is on the rise because of DR technology," says David Voegtlin, President of Diagnostic Excellence. DR technology allows mobile acquisition of images without moving the patient from their room or the OR with little difference in image quality from those on stationary systems. The use of DR in conjunction with portable X-ray dramatically cuts the time that it takes to obtain images and have them available for review by a radiologist or specialist. "DR technology provides improvement in patient care and a reduction in the time spent by radiology technologists in performing these procedures," says Voegtlin.

Portable X-rays - most used and most abused

Phipps says portables are the workhorses in any imaging department. Yet, they don't get the respect other equipment receives. The challenge is to try and train radiology technologists to respect the fundamental changes inherent with the new high-end DR portables like those equipped with Canon CXDI-50 and CXDI-60 detectors, as well as WiFi to send images to PACS via the facilities wireless network, for example. Phipps says that common service to portable X-ray equipment includes preventative maintenance and mechanical repairs, which are a result of their "challenging work environment."

Matt Horne, President of Imaging Tech Co, Ltd, sees the portable X-ray industry as a stable market as far as the number of units in service. "The market is stable because hospitals are buying new and refurbished portables at about the same pace as in previous years and portables are an essential piece of equipment for any radiology department's day-to-day operations," says Horne. "Due to the mobile nature of the machines, service problems vary widely from mechanical to electronic to a combination of both. There is nothing that would be considered a common problem when it comes to portable X-ray machines." His biggest challenge is finding facilities that do not have in-house service providers. When it comes to DR portable X-ray equipment, Horne believes the technology needs to improve and the cost needs to come down to make digital a viable improvement on a portable. "I feel digital technology on a portable is overkill and asking for expensive trouble," says Horne. "A portable experiences very rough treatment in its daily use and to put a system costing in excess of $100K is a poor use of resources, because for the same price, a facility could put a CR reader on every single floor." Typically a CR system runs about $30K to $75K, depending on the vendor.

More Industry Reports