Hospital giant Intermountain continues expanding homegrown outpatient imaging center chain
Hospital giant Intermountain Health continues to expand its homegrown outpatient imaging center chain in a bid to lure cost-conscious consumers.
Tellica Imaging recently rolled out its 10th location, with the latest in Spanish Fork, Utah, part of the Provo-Orem metro area near Salt Lake City. This marks Intermountain’s seventh freestanding center in its home state, also operating two outposts in New Hampshire and another in Idaho.
The 33-hospital nonprofit launched the brand in 2021 as it seeks to wrest back business from independent imaging center operators who can charge much less. Tellica uses flat rate, transparent pricing, estimating that the most patients will pay out of pocket is $400 for a CT and $600 for an MRI. This includes a radiologist read, related lab work and any necessary intravenous contrast.
“A large percentage of the imaging we do in medicine could be done outside of a hospital, but people usually go to a hospital out of habit not realizing it may cost thousands of dollars more,” Doug Greally, MD, president and chief medical officer for Tellica, said in a statement shared Jan. 29. “Medical imaging is fundamental to both diagnosis and treatment of patients in modern medicine, and this is how we’re improving access for everyone.”
Intermountain noted that, without the overhead of a hospital, the cost is “significantly lower” at its centers. While radiology groups have been operating in this fashion for years, the Intermountain offshoot labels Tellica as a “new model of care,” one that lowers costs, delivers imaging closer to home and helps “relieve the backlog of appointments at local hospitals.” The company previously announced a partnership with Boston-based BMC Health System to open centers on the East Coast and signed a lease last fall for a new center in Tacoma, Washington.
As payers push imaging to less costly outpatient settings, Intermountain joins a growing number of hospitals opening their own options. South Carolina-based Prisma Health announced in August that it was launching new non-hospital outpatient options, with centers in the communities of Greenville and West Columbia. Other hospital systems are going the partnership route. Investor-backed Outpatient Imaging Affiliates recently inked a deal with UConn Health in Connecticut to open the academic provider’s first freestanding imaging site. Publicly traded industry giant RadNet also has inked several joint ventures with larget hospital systems.
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.