RadNet Inc. is entering its first new market since 2020, acquiring seven imaging centers in the Houston metropolitan area, the company announced Tuesday.
The deal is with Houston Medical Imaging LLC, which offers multimodality services including MRI, PET/CT, X-ray, ultrasound and mammography. Last year alone, the centers performed over 135,000 procedures, producing $28 million-plus in revenue.
RadNet said it has a definitive agreement in place to purchase the new locations and hopes to close the deal by the end of June. Leaders see promise in America’s fourth largest city, with some 7.3 million Texans in the greater metro area.
“We believe this initial acquisition forms a strong platform from which to grow a new core network for RadNet,” President and CEO Howard Berger, MD, said in a Feb. 27 announcement. “We are confident of the opportunity for further acquisitions, de novo build-outs, health system partnerships and other means of expansion, which include bringing our AI and leading edge clinical and operating digital health solutions to the patient and referring communities of greater Houston.”
RadNet’s last entered a new marketplace in October 2020, when it announced a joint venture deal with 41-hospital Dignity Health in Arizona. The partnership kicked off with the acquisition of AZ Tech MRI & Radiology, which operated eight imaging centers. The publicly traded, Los Angeles-based imaging center operator also acquired seven Phoenix-area locations from health insurer Cigna in January.
Berger said RadNet will remain “intentional and methodical” in its approach to growth in Houston. He sees some of the same characteristics there as in the company’s other core geographies, which include California, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Florida. Altogether, the company owns or operates 366 locations with 9,000 employees.
“We welcome the over 20 affiliated radiologists and the approximately 140 additional team members who currently support these Houston facilities and look forward to growing this practice with them in the near future,” Berger said in the announcement.
Houston Medical Imaging was first founded in 1998, according to its website. RadNet said it will continue operating the centers under the HMI brand.
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.