Recent Shifts in Place of Service for Noninvasive Diagnostic Imaging: Have Hospitals Missed an Opportunity?

Medicare NDI utilization rates increased in all places of service between 1996 and 2006. Growth in hospital outpatient imaging was slower than that in private imaging facilities. Because NDI can be a profitable business, it seems that hospitals have lost an important opportunity. Much of this loss of business was to nonradiologist physicians, whose private office imaging utilization rate grew considerably more rapidly than that of radiologists.