Steering Outpatient Imaging to Freestanding Centers

This is the core economic wedge in outpatient imaging, because the same MRI or CT often gets paid very differently depending on the building where it happens. Hospital outpatient departments layer a hospital facility payment onto the scan, while freestanding centers usually run with lower overhead and lower contracted rates. That makes steerage valuable for payers and self insured employers, and it makes Scan.com useful as the routing layer that finds a lower cost site, books the slot, and returns the result through one national connection.

• The price gap is real and persistent. Commercial claims research found hospital outpatient imaging prices running 2 to 3 times physician office prices in BCBS data, and broader site of care studies found hospital outpatient departments charging up to 2.94 times office settings for similar services.
  2 nih 6 ajmc
• The product matters because price transparency alone does not move a patient. Scan.com combines provider search, price estimates, scheduling, and report retrieval in one API, so a health plan, TPA, or navigation app can turn a doctor order into an actual booked appointment at an independent center.
  3 scan 4 scan 5 sacra
• The employer backdrop makes this urgent. Mercer projected average employer health benefit costs rising 6.5% in 2026, and nearly 9% without cost reduction actions. Imaging steerage is attractive because it cuts spend on a common service without removing coverage or asking members to skip care.
  1 mercer

The next step is for imaging to behave more like lab testing, where a payer connects once to a national network and routes volume automatically. If Scan.com keeps embedding into brokers, TPAs, and care navigation products, site of care steerage can shift from a one off savings tactic into default claims infrastructure for outpatient scans.