Shields MRI expands business with new outpatient surgery center in Shrewsbury

See the story in the Boston Business Journal HERE.

Shields MRI has spent 30 years running and operating imaging centers, making a name for itself by providing a service at a cost markedly below what most hospitals will charge. Now it is turning its attention to a new endeavor: lower cost outpatient surgery.

The center, planned to be a joint initiative between Quincy-based Shields Health Care and UMass Memorial Health, may present a new way of the future for health care and introduce a kind of retail competition in a market dominated by hospitals. For Shields, the outpatient surgery center represents a new opportunity to expand a business that has been growing at a healthy clip for three decades.

“Everyone is trying to identify a location where they can lower the cost,” said Tom Shields, president of Shields Health Care Group, in an interview. “The hospital setting is difficult to manage — you have emergency, inpatients, unpredicted interruptions from ER. If you take outpatient cases out of that and dedicate it to a dedicated environment, you’ll be more efficient and predictable and it makes a lot of sense.”

The Shrewsbury surgical center will be a 40,000-square-foot facility featuring nine operating rooms and physician offices.

The $32 million project, which is being funded 50/50 by UMass and Shields, is slated to begin construction late this fall, with an opening anticipated for early 2018. The state has already approved the project, Shields said, and the groups are looking for a construction company and a bank to finance the project. Eventually, the center will employ a staff up to 100 people, with the surgeons coming from UMass Memorial.

The move grows on UMass and Shield’s existing partnership in running an MRI business. More so, the growth into outpatient surgery was influenced by the market. Insurers are seeking to care for patients on a budgeted basis, and more patients are taking on the cost of their care through high deductible plans. Lower costing health care has become the goal.

Shields said his company’s model is poised to fill that gap, having run outpatient imaging centers — 30 MRI centers, 14 PET/CT scan centers and two radiation oncology centers — for years at a lower cost than the market. He said his staff could do the same in the surgical realm.

Shields and UMass have yet to decide what types of surgeries the center the center would perform. Shields said it will likely be multi-specialty, potentially including orthopedics, urology, plastic surgery, ear, nose and throat surgery, and maybe general surgery. Even then, the doctors will decide which cases are appropriate for an outpatient surgery center, and which would require an inpatient stay in the hospital or be too complex for the center.

Shields hopes the partnership with UMass is only the beginning for Shields outpatient surgical centers.

“I’d like to grow it,” Shields said. “Wherever we can add value, that’s what we’re looking to do. If we can collaborate with hospitals, bring in operational discipline and highest quality care and do it in an efficient and affordable way, that’s where our interests lie. We would welcome any opportunities in the future.

The growth follows on the growth this year of more PET/CT scanning locations, two more of which will be added in the coming months. Another in Maine is expected to be signed by the end of the month.

“Our goal was never to be the biggest, richest or largest. It was always to be the best at what you do,” Shields said of the company’s evolution. “Understanding that, you need to grow. You either grow or you perish. But it needs to be controlled growth. We’re not just growing; we’re growing because we can add value to a certain marketplace.”