by
Gus Iversen, Editor in Chief | August 04, 2017
From the August 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Still, other ISOs have barely felt the impact of XR-29 at all. Richard Geertson, director of service for Oxford Instruments, says his customers contacted the company with questions about certification and his team helped them figure out where they stood.
“By digging into the nuts and bolts of what they need to do, we helped them through that process,” says Geertson. “Actually, it was just another opportunity to demonstrate to our customers that we are here to help them.”
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Derek Stovesand, vice president of business development and marketing at Richardson Healthcare, a third-party parts and training provider, says his company has been indirectly impacted by XR-29 in instances when it led facilities to upgrade systems or move to a different brand of equipment.
In order to ensure its customers had the option to remain compliant without relying exclusively on equipment manufacturers, Richardson formed a partnership with Medic Vision, which provides a vendor-neutral and FDA-approved solution to meet the standard.
Non-OEM certification
Although some OEMs are witnessing a spike in CT sales, there are still many imaging facilities that are sticking with their old scanners and investing in third-party solutions like the one Richardson is referring its customers to.
"By the second half of 2016, the OEMs declared certain models as non-upgradeable for XR-29 and started referring their customers [with these models] to us," says Eyal Aharon, CEO of Medic Vision. "We do not publish exact numbers, but I can say that by now we have hundreds of systems installed, and most of these customers were referred to us by the OEMs."
The lost income due to XR-29 noncompliance for a CT operator with an average workload of about 12 patients per day is roughly $32,000, according to Aharon, who estimates the price of his solution can usually provide a return on investment for those facilities within a year.
Of course, since those numbers only refer to specific scans being billed to Medicare from imaging centers, physician offices and hospital outpatient settings, there are some facilities that have done the math and discovered it is in their best interest to stay the course without seeking XR-29 compliance in the first place, or only getting certain scanners certified.
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