These days you'd think there wouldn't be much demand for an 11-year old mobile MRI. But, you'd be wrong--at least according to Scott Cameron. The General Manager of Integral Mobile Services, a Western New York supplier of rented Mobile MRIs says customers are knocking down his door to rent his 1996 Picker Vista. "We've got it rented through the end of 2008," says Cameron, whose company specializes in "interim-rentals," mobile replacement units for hospitals and imaging centers in the midst of upgrading or purchasing a brand new unit.

Integral Mobile Services, which primarily rents Philips and GE equipment to clients east of the Mississippi, sees the demand for more "vintage" mobile equipment as being a direct result of cost cutting and pricing changes associated with DRA's. "We're finding that facilities are extremely cost-conscious these days. The mobiles we rent are designed to replace the units coming out of a facility, not the one going back in after the upgrade. With cost being such an enormous factor we're finding older machines are suddenly very popular." Cameron says that a well-maintained older unit can save a customer up to 50% on what they'd have to pay for a newer model. And since the older models are essentially the same ones being removed until a new one can be installed they offer the added advantage of being completely familiar to the technologists who'll be using it. "Basically we're saying, here's the same unit you're already used to, but in a coach."

Don't worry if Integral Mobile Services' units are all rented when you call. Cameron is happy to work with other suppliers of mobile rentals--some might call them his competitors-- to help a customer locate an interim rental if they need one. "We're not about to let a facility go without an MRI just because ours are all spoken for," he explains. And that's an example of something that was also old but now new again: good old customer service.

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