At the most recent meeting of the Radiology Business Management Association in Charlotte, a new model for independent group practice collaboration was proposed to practices around the country. The model allows independent practices to succeed and is an alternative to the traditional radiology group alignment models of merger, acquisition, or outright takeover by a hospital or a private equity group. These collaborations can take different forms, but they share the same underlying goals: gaining the necessary resources to fulfill the needs of their primary clients—hospitals, payors and patients—inclusive of delivering meaningful information and decision support.

Radiology practices have long sought a solution to the consolidation occurring in their marketplaces, as well as the commoditization happening in their midst. The fundamental problem is delivering ever-higher levels of service and quality with diminished resources.

It is an article of faith for those who are active in the stock market that both bears and bulls can and do succeed and make money, as long as each approach is a decision based on a strategy. Bears are skeptical, cautious, hedging their bets against a rising tide that they see as illusory or unsustainable.

To achieve success in consolidating two radiology practices, it’s important that they are a “good fit.” But what determines a good fit?  While practices may be similar in size and may even have some structural similarities, no two practices are exactly alike.

Brooklyn-based Urban Radiology had been a mainstay in the Coney Island community for nearly five years before its outpatient-imaging center was completely destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012.  Eighteen months later, it has reopened officially to serve the community with new, state-of-the-art imaging equipment.

This year, 2014, marks the 20-year anniversary for RamSoft, Inc., a perfect vantage point from which to view 20 years of participation in the evolution of the imaging informatics industry for Vijay Ramanathan, president and CEO, and Siva Ramanathan, chief technology officer. RamSoft was founded in 1994 by N. Ramanathan, PhD, also known as Dr. Ram, a distinguished faculty member at the University of Toronto, with roots at the Toronto General Hospital. He is the father of Vijay and Siva. 

The concept of a unified storage management system to index and manage data across an organization, including data in public cloud services, company servers and employee devices is something that is commonplace, even taken for granted by employees in corporate environments, but in hospital systems, the adoption of vendor neutral archiving (VNA) systems is in its infancy, as healthcare works to catch up to the technological standard of corporate America. 

You can show Kirk Hintz the money, or show him the data, but what he really wants to see is the variance. Formerly an options trader in Naples, Fla., with some practice administration experience, Hintz assumed the position of CEO for Nashville-based Radiology Alliance two years ago.