The Service Line

RadNet, the country’s largest publicly traded chain of outpatient imaging centers, posted 25 percent revenue growth in the second quarter of 2026 and just opened a new 250 million dollar credit line earmarked for more acquisitions, the clearest signal yet that the buyer market for independent radiology groups keeps getting more competitive. RadNet Inc. (Nasdaq: RDNT) reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of 622.7 million dollars, up 25 percent year over year, and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of 99.7 million dollars, up 22.7 percent, in its Form 10-Q filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) August 10, 2026. The company’s Digital Health segment, which houses its artificial intelligence (AI) imaging products, grew revenue 56.5 percent to 32.4 million dollars, with AI-specific revenue up 136 percent and annual recurring revenue nearly doubling to 105.5 million dollars; RadNet ended the quarter with 726.3 million dollars in cash and a net-debt-to-EBITDA ratio of 1.8 times after repricing its term loan and adding a 250 million dollar incremental facility in June 2026 that management earmarked for further acquisitions and health system partnerships. For an independent imaging group weighing a sale, the read is straightforward: the largest strategic buyer just got more cash, cheaper debt, and a wider AI revenue base to justify paying up, even as Medicare’s permanent payment path for that same AI software remains undecided. Confidence: High on the reported financials, drawn directly from RadNet’s SEC filing; Medium on management’s forward guidance toward more partnership announcements, which is paraphrased from secondary earnings-call coverage. Sources: RadNet Form 10-Q, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, RadNet Reports Second Quarter Financial Results, StockTitan, RadNet Q2 2026 earnings call transcript, Investing.com.

Reimbursement

Medicare’s proposed 2027 physician fee schedule cuts radiology’s base pay again, but the code-level swings underneath it are far more extreme than the subspecialty averages we reported two weeks ago, with one common CT code proposed for a 149 percent increase and another for a 15 percent cut. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed the Calendar Year (CY) 2027 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) rule July 16, 2026, cutting the conversion factor for physicians outside qualifying Alternative Payment Models to 32.8409 dollars from 33.4009 dollars, down 1.68 percent, and the qualifying-APM conversion factor to 33.1693 dollars from 33.5675 dollars, down 1.19 percent. Beneath that headline, the Society of Interventional Radiology’s (SIR) impact analysis shows interventional radiology gaining 3 percent overall, 5 percent in the nonfacility setting and 1 percent in the facility setting, once practice-expense revaluation is counted, while the American College of Radiology (ACR) flags individual codes swinging far past those subspecialty averages, including CT angiography of the chest, CPT 71275, proposed to rise 149 percent to 83.09 dollars, and CT of the upper extremity without contrast, CPT 73200, proposed to fall 15 percent. A practice that budgets off the subspecialty-average headline risks missing which piece of its own procedure mix is actually gaining or losing, and comments on the rule close September 14, 2026. Confidence: Medium-High; the conversion factor figures and code-level swings are corroborated across SIR’s and ACR’s own rule summaries and independent trade coverage, but CMS.gov’s primary rule text and fact sheet blocked automated verification this run. Sources: SIR MPFS CY2027 Proposed Rule Summary and Impact Analysis, Society of Interventional Radiology, ACR issues initial summary of 2027 MPFS proposed rule, AuntMinnie.

Enforcement

A 3.3 million dollar ransomware settlement covering two Washington state imaging practices, which we first flagged two weeks ago, now has a hard claims deadline eight days after this issue publishes and a final court hearing a week after that. Class members affected by the January 2025 ransomware attack on Mt. Baker Imaging LLC and Northwest Radiologists have until August 19, 2026 to file a claim for their share of the 3.3 million dollar settlement fund, either a pro-rata cash payment with no proof of loss required or up to 5,000 dollars for documented out-of-pocket losses, plus two years of credit and medical-identity monitoring, according to the court-authorized settlement website; Whatcom County Superior Court Judge Evan Jones is scheduled to hold the final approval hearing August 21, 2026. For imaging operators still shopping cyber-liability coverage, the settlement remains the cleanest recent benchmark for what a mid-size Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) or Radiology Information System (RIS) breach costs per patient record, a little under 10 dollars across the roughly 340,184 affected patients, and it is about to become final rather than hypothetical. Confidence: High, drawn directly from the court-authorized settlement administrator’s website. Sources: Mt. Baker Imaging and Northwest Radiologists Data Breach Settlement, official settlement website, Mt. Baker Imaging & Northwest Radiologists Data Breach Settlement, HIPAA Journal.

Who’s Buying

Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia signed a new multi-year in-network agreement with a Radiology Partners affiliate, a payer-network deal that runs counter to the No Surprises Act arbitration friction that has otherwise defined the relationship between large radiology groups and insurers. Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia and Northside Radiology Associates, a Georgia affiliate of Radiology Partners, the nation’s largest private-equity-backed radiology group, announced the multi-year agreement August 3, 2026, maintaining in-network access for Anthem members across Northside’s Georgia imaging and interventional radiology sites. Financial terms were not disclosed. For operators watching whether large private-equity-backed radiology platforms are settling into stable payer contracts or continuing to run high volumes of claims through independent dispute resolution (IDR), an in-network renewal in a market where Radiology Partners has real scale is a data point toward stability, though it says nothing about the group’s IDR posture in other states. Confidence: High on the agreement’s existence and parties, drawn from the companies’ own release; Low on whether contract rates moved toward or away from the Qualifying Payment Amount, since financial terms were not disclosed. Sources: Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia, Northside Radiology Associates announce new agreement, Businesswire.

Clinical Policy

GE HealthCare just won FDA clearance for a faster automated breast ultrasound system built for supplemental screening in women with dense breast tissue, adding another capital-equipment option to the crowded field competing for imaging centers’ next equipment dollar. GE HealthCare announced August 3, 2026 that its Invenia Automated Breast Ultrasound System (ABUS) Prime scanner and a redesigned enterprise viewer, ABUS StreamVue, received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance and European CE marking, with the company citing up to a 40 percent increase in scan speed and up to 93 percent sensitivity for lesion detection in dense-breast patients when paired with the platform’s AI-assisted reading tools. Breast-imaging service lines already weighing automated ultrasound against contrast-enhanced mammography (CEM) and MRI for dense-breast supplemental screening now have a faster automated-ultrasound option to model against those alternatives on throughput and technologist time, the two variables that most determine whether a supplemental-screening line pencils out. Confidence: High on the clearance and the manufacturer-stated performance figures, drawn from GE HealthCare’s own release and investor announcement; Medium on the real-world sensitivity figures, which are company-reported rather than independently peer-reviewed. Sources: GE HealthCare Expands Breast Imaging Portfolio with Invenia ABUS Prime and Launch of ABUS StreamVue, GE HealthCare, GE HealthCare Expands Breast Imaging Portfolio, GE HealthCare Investor Relations.

The Operator Metric

The number to track this week: 27 percent, the one-year jump in the time it takes to get an outpatient imaging study interpreted, the fastest single-year increase on record and a sign that staffing and subspecialty-coverage gaps are now showing up as measurable delay, not just anecdote. The Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute, the American College of Radiology’s research arm, reported August 4, 2026 that the median time between an outpatient imaging study and its final interpretation rose 27 percent between 2023 and 2024, based on an analysis of 2.9 million Medicare office and hospital-outpatient imaging claims; ultrasound turnaround worsened the most in that single year, up 49.1 percent, followed by radiography and fluoroscopy at 35.4 percent, CT at 11.6 percent, and MRI at 4.5 percent, while the absolute median time rose from 2 hours 11 minutes in 2014 to 6 hours 1 minute in 2024, a 177 percent increase over the decade with 92 percent of that rise concentrated in 2022 through 2024. For a group negotiating hospital coverage contracts or subspecialty staffing, this is now a modality-specific benchmark to test against internal data, and ultrasound and radiography, not the CT and MRI volumes usually blamed for radiologist workload, are where turnaround is degrading fastest right now. Confidence: High, drawn directly from the Neiman Health Policy Institute’s own press release citing its Journal of the American College of Radiology study methodology. Sources: Imaging Interpretation Turnaround Time Continued to Increase in 2024, by 27%, Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute.