Medical & Imaging Labs
Industry Profile Report
Dive Deep into the industry with a 25+ page industry report (pdf format) including the following chapters
Industry Overview Current Conditions, Industry Structure, How Firms Operate, Industry Trends, Credit Underwriting & Risks, and Industry Forecast.
Call Preparation Call Prep Questions, Industry Terms, and Weblinks.
Financial Insights Working Capital, Capital Financing, Business Valuation, and Financial Benchmarks.
Industry Profile Excerpts
Industry Overview
The 7,200 medical and imaging labs in the US perform analytical and diagnostic services for patients and health care providers. Medical labs provide a variety of testing services, including routine clinical, anatomic pathology, genetic, and esoteric tests. Other types of testing include drug use, risk assessment for life insurance, and dental. Imaging labs provide diagnostic procedures, including x-rays; MRI, CT and PET scans; ultrasound; mammography; nuclear medicine; and fluoroscopy.
Competition from Health Care Providers and Academia
Medical and imaging labs compete with hospitals, clinics, physicians, and universities for services.
Complying With Government Regulation
Medical and imaging labs must be licensed and must adhere to federal and state government regulations which establish technical, operational, personnel and quality requirements.
Industry size & Structure
A typical medical lab operates out of single location, employs 63 workers, and generates about $11 million annually. A typical imaging lab operates out of a single location, employs about 17 workers, and generates about $4.5 million annually.
- The medical lab industry consists of about 7,200 companies, employs 320,000 workers, and generates about $72 billion annually.
- Large medical labs include Laboratory Corporation of America, Quest Diagnostics, and Sonic Healthcare. Large imaging labs include RadNet, Imaging Healthcare Specialists, and Intrinsic Imaging.
Industry Forecast
Medical & Imaging Labs Industry Growth
Recent Developments
Nov 15, 2023 - Sales Increase
- Industry sales increased moderately during the first half of 2023 even as firms reduced prices slightly. Industry employment was unchanged during the first eight months of 2023 while wages for nonsupervisory employees decreased slightly.
- More entities are charging extra hospital-type fees as hospitals buy up doctors offices and imaging centers, according to U.S. PIRG. Facility fees are charges that are supposed to support the added cost of hospitals (like running an ICU or having more bedside nurses). Regular doctor offices and imaging centers don’t have those added costs, so charging patients a facility fee is unjustified, according to U.S. PIRG. Patients don’t usually know about facility fees until after they get the medical bill. Insurance generally doesn’t cover facility fees when care is provided outside of a hospital.
- Clinical labs’ robust, rapid response to the COVID-19 pandemic helped to contain the virus and save lives, according to an Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine survey. The challenges labs faced with insufficient supplies and staffing shortages intensified since 2020, however. The percentage of laboratory professionals reporting staffing issues rose steadily from 35.4% in May 2020 to 87.5% in January 2022, raising questions about whether labs would have the necessary resources to respond to a similar public health emergency today.
- Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to fuse images from clinical X-ray computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to allow a clearer and more clinically useful interpretation of CT and MRI scans, according to research published in the International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology. The technique combines the hard bone structures of the CT scan with the soft tissue detail of the MRI image. Given that CT and MRI scans individually have strengths and weaknesses, the use of AI could allow radiographers to fuse synergistically both types of scan, combining the strengths of each and discarding the weaknesses.
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