Northwest Mobile Services LLC has secured a foothold in a regional health-care niche by taking its imaging services to assisted-living and skilled-nursing facilities, adult-family homes, and home health-care settings to provide X-rays and ultrasounds on-site.


The Beaverton, Ore.-based company, which has provided on-site X-rays and ultrasounds here for three years, has about 70 percent of the market share for such mobile services in Eastern Washington, says Marlene Baird, its director of marketing. It expects to increase its share of the market after its main competitor here, Mobile Medical Diagnostics, closes its doors this month, Baird says.


An employee of Mobile Medical Diagnostics, which is owned by the disbanding Spokane Radiology Consultants PS, confirmed that the company will cease operating here April 18. That company employed four radiology technicians.


In Spokane, Northwest Mobile Services currently employs five radiology technicians and one ultrasonographer. Its office here is located at 7311 E. Nora. Overall, the company employs about 60 people and does business in Washington, Idaho, and Oregon, she says.


The company plans to hire one additional radiology technician soon, and probably two more this coming fall to meet the expected increase in demand for its services, she says.


Darren Glassman, the companys Beaverton-based president, declines to disclose the companys revenues, but says Northwest Mobile Services revenues grew more than 30 percent in the Spokane area in 2007, and he expects them to grow sharply again here this year. Overall, he says, the companys revenues grew 22 percent in 2007, and he anticipates companywide revenue growth in the high teens this year. Glassman and his father-in-law, Jack Shapiro, founded the company in Portland in 2003, he says.


Baird says the companys on-site services are popular with assisted-living and skilled-nursing facilities because the less elderly patients have to be moved, the better. Such facilities frequently call for services when a patient falls, or for follow-up imaging studies after a surgery. In the winter months, chest X-rays are common, she says.


Baird asserts that the companys services save time and the expense of transporting non-ambulatory clients to off-site medical facilities for such exams and also reduce the stress that fragile residents can experience from moves.


We also deal with dementia patients, she says. Moves can traumatize them.


In addition to doing tests here, the companys Spokane staff perform exams in Post Falls, Coeur dAlene, and Kellogg, Idaho; and Fairfield, Tekoa and Moses Lake, Wash. The company also sends a technician to Milton-Freewater, Ore., which is south of Walla-Walla, Wash., one day a week, she says. She says Northwest Mobile Services currently doesnt have any accounts north of the Spokane area.


Mike Beasley, the companys Spokane-area manager and one of its five Spokane-based radiology technicians, says each employee here takes X-rays for between eight and 12 patients each day, and more during scheduled visits to larger institutions. The company has contracts with more than 30 nursing homes and assisted-living facilities in the area, Beasley says. In addition to traditional retirement facilities, the company has contracts with institutions for the disabled and with correctional facilities, he says.


Baird says Northwest Mobile Services technicians are dispatched from the companys central dispatch office in Beaverton. The dispatcher schedules an exam and sends a text message to a technicians cell phone with the details of the exam and the address of where its to be conducted. The company has regular business hours five days a week and has a technician on call 24 hours a day, Baird says. Technicians typically work alone, she says.


When a radiology technician gets an order, he or she drives to the facility in one of the companys three types of vans.


The company has what it calls digital vans, each of which contains a laptop computer, a digital X-ray scanner that is brought into the facility to take X-rays at the patients bedside, and wireless cell-phone technology through which the technician sends images to the companys contract radiologists to read.


The radiologists, who are located in California, read the images and fax reports on them back to the facility or to the doctor who requested the exam, Baird says.


The company also has what it calls shoot-and-run vans, which use X-ray film technology, Baird says. A technician wheels the portable tube-style X-ray machine into the facility, usually right to the patients bedside, Baird says.


Once the exam is complete, the technician drives the film cassette back to one of the companys three film-processing sites in Spokane. The film is processed, then the X-ray image is scanned into a computer for digital transmission to the companys contract radiologist for reading, Baird says.


The companys third type of van, called an all-equipped van, has both film and digital X-ray equipment, a portable film processor, and a wireless connection to transmit images for reading.


Baird says the companys ultrasonographer doesnt even need a van to perform abdominal, vascular, and small organ ultrasounds and echocardiography. The ultrasound equipment the technicians use is about the size of a laptop, Baird says.


Baird says Northwest mobile Services imaging typically is covered by Medicare or private insurance companies, and that its billings are handled out of its Beaverton office.


Contact Jeanne Gustafson at (509) 344-1264 or via e-mail at jeanneg@spokanejournal.com.