by
Diana Bradley, Staff Writer | April 19, 2012
From the April 2012 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
“We have found pulsed wave produces less radiation than nonpulsed wave,” says Greg Sebastian, a radiologic technologist at the Lubbock Vascular Access Center in Texas.
Cost vs. value
In the last year, there have not been any big product announcements, with many companies fine-tuning the systems they have without making any major platform changes. This lack of significant technical breakthrough may be due to the slowing growth in developed markets like the U.S. and Europe. However, the C-arm service sector is still growing. This is especially true for the U.S. market, where there exists much uncertainty about the ramifications of health care reform. Likewise, the European market has its own concerns about the overall health of the European economy. As a result, customers are keeping their older C-arms longer and longer.
“With C-arms, why would someone commit to a new machine when a used one costs less and the billing is the same?” asks Leon Gugel, president of refurb company Metropolis International LLC. “The problem is when the OEMs don’t sell a lot, there are less trades; this in turn affects the pre-owned market,” he adds.
Because lower-cost value products have been more prevalent in the last 12 months, the average price for a C-arm is lower this year than last.
“Prices are 5 percent lower than a year ago,” says Shrawder. “If you took a company’s total revenue and divided it by the total units sold, the revenue per unit is down 5 percent year-over-year.”
With mobile C-arms in completely new clinical areas such as
Siemens Healthcare’s
Arcadis Orbic 3D.
minimally invasive heart valve implantation, the costs for the units have been established in a price range far below fixed installed C-arms, but slightly above C-arms traditionally used in conservative and established applications such as pain management or trauma. Regarding permanently installed C-arms, Werner explains equipment costs have been steady for the past few years, though some related costs are going up — typically from third-party suppliers.
On the pre-owned or refurbished C-arm side, equipment costs have been steady over the past several years, according to Bluestone’s Blaustein.
