Insurer-owned hospital system has invested $400M to bolster radiology services in recent years
A health insurer-owned hospital system is detailing plans to spend $12 million on expanding its radiology department to better service community—part of more than $400 million invested in imaging in recent years.
Allegheny Health Network is using the funds to build a new 8,000 square-foot imaging center at its hospital located in Natrona Heights, Pa. It’s also shutting down an outpatient radiology center located 2 miles away from the core campus and absorbing those services into the new location.
“To better serve our diverse patient populations and communities, it is critical to have comprehensive imaging care close to home,” radiologist Bethany Casagranda, DO, chair of the Allegheny Health Network Imaging Institute, said March 10. “By combining our Natrona Heights location with [Allegheny Valley Hospital], patients will have everything they need conveniently located under one roof.”
The health system said the new center will offer additional breast imaging and mammography capacity, along with dual X-ray absorptiometry. That’s on top of the current services that include ultrasound, 3D mammo, CT, MRI and general radiography. Allegheny said its additionally working to build a new “mobile imaging pad” that allows for rotating offerings between MRI and PET-CT beginning in August.
Casagranda and colleagues said they’ve seen “robust” demand for imaging recently. In 2022, the closing outpatient center performed about 12,000 outpatient imaging procedures while the hospital department handled another 31,000.
Allgeheny Health Network and its parent company, Highmark Health insurance, said they have invested a total of roughly $400 million into the AHN Imaging Institute over the past several years. That’s allowed the two to enhance its technological capabilities while expanding capacity in its service area. The insurer first agreed to acquire the health system a decade ago for $1 billion, according to published reports at the time.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.