IDX have excellent practices, no argument there from me. And yes CAJ have targeted GP referrals in general. That is not the disadvantage you try and portray.
Medicare pays for a report according to body part and modality. The pay is the same. You don’t get extra if the case reported is complex, or, unfortunately, even if the report is correct. Every comparable examination gets paid the same. So, purely from a business point of view, it is more lucrative to churn through able bodied patients that don’t have anything or much wrong with them. Much easier for a radiologist to report 20 CT’s on GP referred patients, many of which will be normal, than 20 CT’s on specialist/emergency referred patients which are far more likely to be complex to interpret because there is something wrong on the scans. So servicing hospitals yields more interesting work, but it is more labour intensive to do and thus less lucrative, unless you charge an out of pocket fee like IDX does. IDX have the luxury to be able to charge out of pocket fees mostly because their practices have less local competition.
The CAJ and PRY practices exists in areas where there is fierce competition from other practices hence the pressure on them to bulk bill. So I don’t agree that PRY has an advantage over CAJ by having hospital appointments in areas where there is pressure to bulk bill. And PRY’s quality of work produced is certainly not better than CAJ’s imo. Remember last time we chatted, PRY was losing money on radiology alone. This is not the case with CAJ.
You are correct that some of the Capitol branded practices are radiographer owned. A left over from the JC era and CAJ’s beginnings. I don’t believe these models are best practice as there is no radiologist on site. It probably drags the standard of work performed down, and I doubt the referrers know the difference between the two.
Anyway that is the way I see it. Currently I think IDX is overpriced, even though they have a good business, and CAJ is underpriced. I have no interest in PRY because I don’t like the way they do medicine. We shall see what happens next.
CAJ Price at posting:
27.5¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)
