WESTWOOD IMAGING CENTERS PAYMENT FOR REFERRALS L IMAGING IS one of healthcare's fastest-growing sectors, so ervone wants to get in on the action, including physicians. To listrate, imaging costs are Medicare's fastest-growing service item. In s, they rose at three times the rate of other medical services MEDICAL IMAGING IS one total spent on imaging services exceeded $100 billion in z0o8. and the One reason for this rapid increase is the ability of imaging to detect conditions that previously required diagnostic surgery for detection. But another reason could be the financial incentives that make some doctors order more scans than are medically necessary Westwood Imaging Centers told doctors how they could get in on the boom. The deal works like this: Doctors send patients to Westwood for imaging ser- vices, and Westwood charges the referring physician a flat rate per scan. Then, the physician bills the third-party payer for the scan at the going rate. For example, Westwood charges physicians $375 for an MRI scan, while the average reimbursement for the scan is estimated at about $700. Alter deducting about Soo per scan for interpretation and administrative costs (mostly billing and collec- tions), the profit per scan comes in at about $235 per referral