Urologists, orthopedists and gastroenterologists increasingly expanding into interventional radiology

Kansas City Urology Care is joining a growing number of peers—alongside physicians in specialties such as ortho and GI—expanding into interventional radiology—drawing concern from some IR experts. 

KCUC recently announced the opening of its new IR center in the suburb of Merriam, Kansas. The facility offers prostate artery embolization, a “groundbreaking treatment” for enlargement of the organ, along with “other IR procedures.”

The 26-year-old urology group said the specialty has seen rising interest in using IR options to treat PAE. This after 2023 American Urological Guidelines were updated to include prostate artery embolization as a recommended treatment option. 

“Adding interventional radiology services to our practice ensures we can provide the highest quality, comprehensive urologic care to our patients and partners,” Brandan A. Kramer, MD, practice president, said in a July 15 announcement.

KCUC is rolling out the new facility in collaboration with IR Centers. Based in Falls Church, Virginia, IRC is the “nation’s first and only” dedicated interventional radiology platform. Its focus is on supporting urology, gastroenterology and orthopedic practices seeking to expand their scope into IR care. KCUC said partnering with IR Centers has allowed the practice “to bring immediate, nationally recognized expertise in this exciting, new minimally invasive treatment.”

“We are honored to collaborate with KCUC through IR Centers to bring advanced image-guided therapies to the Kansas City community,” interventional radiologist Sandeep Bagla, MD, chief executive of IRC, said in the announcement. “Together, we are improving access to innovative, minimally invasive treatments that enhance men’s health and overall quality of life.”

IR Centers lists over 30 locations on its website, with other partners including Urology of Indiana (with their IR center in Greenwood, Ind.), Gastro Health (in Miami), and the Anderson Orthopedic Clinic (Falls Church, Va.). In addition to helping urologists deliver prostate treatments, IR Centers aids orthopedists in offering options such as genicular artery embolization for knee arthritis. Gastroenterology groups, meanwhile, are adding minimally invasive procedures such as hemorrhoid embolization with the help of IR Centers. 

Interventional radiologists have criticized this care model in recent months. Adam Lustig, MD, a Virginia-based IR specialist, told Radiology Business in March he had previously received referrals from Urology of Virginia. His private practice, Medical Center Radiologists, in Norfolk, Virginia, discussed partnering with UOV to open a new IR center. However, the talks broke off and the urology group instead opted to hire an interventional specialist and open a center with the help of IRC. Lustig also expressed concern about increasingly losing lucrative embolization procedures to other specialties, leaving IRs with little left on their plate.

“There is no ‘partnering’ going on with this model,” Lustig said in March. “This model is taking clinical decision-making and control of patients out of the hands of independent interventional radiologists, undermining the specialty, and reducing interventional radiologists to nothing more than ... technicians, employed by non-radiology and non-interventional radiology practices.”

Meanwhile, Bagla—IR Centers’ founder and a noted expert on prostate artery embolization—disputes claims that such partnerships harm the specialty. He also leads the related Prostate Centers USA, the “network partner” of IR Centers. 

“‘Undermining IR’ as a specialty implies it diminishes their value when it actually increases it—to the overall population that IR can impact, increasing their opportunity to do advanced cases rather than the average IR job (which is made up for the most part by minor nonvascular procedures), to demonstrating their value to the stakeholders, unlike a hospital system or radiology group, which may not see the value of IR,” Bagla said in March.

Prostate Centers USA last month also touted the forthcoming opening of additional IR Centers in communities including Nashville, Tenn., Charlotte, N.C., Los Angeles, Philadelphia, El Paso, Texas and Atlanta. IR Centers now boasts a team of over 40 radiologists and is seeking additional docs across multiple cities, according to a job posting on the Society of Interventional Radiology’s website.