Hospitals invest in mobile MRIs to meet demand, cut costs

Modern Healthcare – Thursday, April 10, 2025
By Lauren Dubinsky

Providers are finding more affordable ways to keep up with the rising demand for MRI exams.

As the population ages and more people are diagnosed with chronic diseases, hospitals are seeing an uptick in patients who need MRI exams. But instead of building out new suites, some providers are renting and buying mobile MRI units to cut down on construction costs. Medtech companies such as Siemens Healthineers, Philips and GE HealthCare sell movable MRIs that can fit inside trailers and scan patients being treated for everything from knee cartilage problems to cancer.

Providers can either buy or rent a mobile MRI scanner and trailer. Rental companies such as Shared Medical Services, Mobile MRI Rentals, DMS Health Technologies and Rayus Radiology purchase mobile MRI scanners from medtech companies and place them into trailers custom-built for this purpose.

Elizabethtown Community Hospital in New York leases a mobile MRI unit with a Philips scanner to offer exams both at its hospital and its rural standalone emergency clinic with an inpatient unit in Ticonderoga, New York. The unit is parked four days per week at the Elizabethtown location and one day at Ticonderoga.

“The number of patients that will require an MRI, it’s not negligible [but] it’s not large enough to justify just one MRI fixed in one location,” said Dr. Jun Chon, chief medical officer at Elizabethtown Community Hospital, which is part of The University of Vermont Health Network. “How do we do it economically so that patients don’t bear the cost because eventually that’s what the cost goes to?”

The cost savings for renting a mobile MRI can be significant. Engineering and design firm HGA estimates the cost to build a typical MRI suite including both construction and equipment is between $3 to $5 million. In contrast, Elizabethtown spends $500,000 annually to lease the mobile MRI unit.

Building an MRI suite is also a time-consuming process that involves obtaining various permits to comply with local, state and federal regulations. Some states also require hospitals obtain a Certificate of Need in which the facility must prove that the community needs the MRI, said Katie Grant, head of the magnetic resonance business at Siemens Healthineers North America. Renting mobile MRIs allows providers to forgo those potential roadblocks and serve an immediate need.

Rental agreements can last from from a day to a decade, said Maureen Kenney, president of rental company Shared Medical Services. Some hospitals rent a mobile MRI unit for a short period of time when their in-house MRI is out of service and they still need to conduct exams, she said. Others may need a rental while building an MRI suite.

“It really just depends on the type of budgetary planning that those facilities are doing,” Kenney said. “If they know that they will never have the patient volume to be able to support full-time services, then they will be a longtime customer of ours.”

Mobile MRI units can be stationed next to or near a healthcare facility, or they can be transported to various healthcare facilities along a designated route. When the mobile MRI is at Elizabethtown Community Hospital, it’s placed adjacent to the hospital as though it’s part of the facility, said Paula Gonyea, vice president of radiology for The University of Vermont Health Network.

“As a patient, they’re actually going through the hospital to get on the truck,” Gonyea said. “It’s not like they’re going outside in a cold parking lot. It feels more like it’s part of the hospital.”

Rental companies can also provide their own technologists to help with the industrywide shortage of workers. A survey from the American Society of Radiologic Technologists in October found the radiology technologist vacancy rate is about 18%, up from 6% in 2021.

“There is a nationwide technologist shortage right now, and so we often get calls to ask if they can just use our staff, and we are a package deal,” Kenney said. “Because technologists are at a premium, we certainly provide the mobile MRI service in order for them to get their scans done, but we won’t provide just the technologists.”

Other providers see mobile MRIs as a pathway to strategic expansion. In August, full-body imaging company Prenuvo opened a mobile MRI clinic in Buffalo, New York to serve patients in Buffalo and Canada. A spokesperson said the mobile MRI gives patients in both countries a more accessible option to receive the exam rather than driving long distances to a hospital with an MRI suite.

The mobile MRI is located at the OWM Integrative Wellness Center in Buffalo but eventually will be driven over the border to Toronto. The company needs to get permission from the Ontario government before making the move to Canada.

Access this article at its original source.