The deal: a 40-year-old independent practice joins a hospital system
Steinberg Diagnostic Medical Imaging (SDMI) had been reading scans in the Las Vegas Valley since 1988: 12 outpatient imaging centers, roughly 30 radiologists, and more than 550 affiliated or employed radiologists, technologists and staff combined. In October 2025, Intermountain Health — the Salt Lake City-based nonprofit system that already runs more than 80 clinics across southern Nevada — announced it would acquire SDMI. The deal closed in phases and was finalized on January 22, 2026.
The stated rationale was the one hospital systems typically give for these deals: expand access, tighten care coordination, and fold a well-regarded independent practice's imaging capacity into a broader network. Eric Liston, Intermountain's Chief Clinical Shared Services Officer, said the acquisition would meet growing demand for "ease of access to high-quality imaging services," and SDMI's founding partner Mark Winkler framed it as joining a larger system to "share our expertise," according to Radiology Business's coverage of the announcement.
Seven months later: a reporting backlog patients could feel
By the second half of 2026, patients and referring physicians in Las Vegas were describing a practice that could no longer turn scans around at its old pace. SDMI's typical result turnaround had been about a week; Radiology Business reported that one patient, 75-year-old cancer patient Richard Smith, was quoted 7-to-10 days for results but waited 23 — long enough that he had to cancel two follow-up doctor's appointments while he waited. "We had to cancel two doctor's appointments, thinking [we would get the results] in the following week," his wife, Susan Smith, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal documented a second case: a STAT MRI for patient Ken Krieger, ordered July 14 and meant to be read within 24 to 48 hours, wasn't read until July 31 — a 17-day gap the patient said contributed to worsening nerve symptoms and falls in the interim. Online reviews for some SDMI locations reportedly slid to around 2.7 out of 5 stars, with one-star complaints about delayed results clustering from around May 2026 onward.
Intermountain didn't dispute the backlog. In a statement reported by Radiology Business and the Review-Journal, the system said: "We understand that waiting for test results can be stressful, and we recognize the uncertainty these delays may create for patients and their families." It attributed the delays to a "national shortage of radiologists, with Southern Nevada being impacted more severely than the rest of the country," and said it is working to add roughly 20 radiologists while expediting licensure, credentialing, privileging and onboarding.
Before and after, in one table
| Metric | Before acquisition | Reported after acquisition |
|---|---|---|
| Routine result turnaround | 7–10 days (typical, per SDMI) | Up to 23 days in a documented case |
| STAT MRI turnaround | 24–48 hours (ordering standard) | 17 days in a documented case |
| Ownership structure | Independent, physician-led practice | Hospital-system-owned outpatient imaging |
| Radiologist count | ~30 radiologists at SDMI | Intermountain adding ~20 more to close gap |
Figures as reported by Radiology Business and the Las Vegas Review-Journal; individual patient cases are examples cited in that coverage, not practice-wide averages.
Why a merger meant to expand access can shrink it
The mechanism here isn't unique to Las Vegas. Nevada is already tied for the lowest number of radiologists per capita of any U.S. state — about 9 per 100,000 people, alongside Oklahoma, Mississippi and Wyoming, according to a 2025 Medicus Healthcare Solutions report on the radiologist shortage. Folding a 12-site practice into a larger system's credentialing, IT, billing and referral infrastructure adds administrative integration work on top of that existing supply gap, and none of it reads a single scan. Unless a hospital system brings in materially more reading capacity on day one — new radiologist hires, expanded teleradiology coverage, or software that changes how much a radiologist can read in a shift — bolting more referral volume onto the same interpretation capacity produces exactly what SDMI patients reported: the same number of readers, more studies queued in front of them, and a turnaround time that stretches instead of compresses.
This case is anecdotal but not isolated. A 2025 Government Accountability Office review of physician-practice consolidation found that roughly 55% of U.S. physicians were employed by or affiliated with a hospital system in 2024, up from about 26% in 2012 (Physicians Advocacy Institute data cited in the report) — and that some physician groups it interviewed reported wait times for available appointments were sometimes shorter at independent practices than at hospital-owned ones. GAO was careful to note the limits of that evidence: it said it "did not identify any studies that examined the effect of physician consolidation on access to care by any acquiring entity type that met our methodological standards." In other words, the directional concern is well documented in stakeholder testimony; a rigorous causal study of consolidation's effect on wait times specifically doesn't yet exist. The Steinberg case is exactly the kind of concrete, checkable data point that testimony-based evidence usually lacks.
The capacity lever that doesn't require more radiologists to already exist
Intermountain's own fix — hire about 20 more radiologists — is the right instinct but a slow one; recruiting, licensing, credentialing and privileging a radiologist in a new state routinely takes months, which is exactly the gap SDMI patients fell into this year. It also isn't available to every group: a shortage state can't conjure trained radiologists on demand, whether the practice in question was just acquired or has been independent for decades.
What can move faster than a hiring pipeline is how much of each existing radiologist's time a single study consumes. AI-assisted CT reporting generates a structured, comprehensive draft report before a radiologist opens the case — covering findings, measurements and standard sections a radiologist would otherwise have to dictate from scratch — so the radiologist's job shifts from composing the report to reviewing, correcting and finalizing it. That is a throughput gain a group can capture without adding headcount, whether that group is a newly consolidated hospital-system practice absorbing merger volume or an independent group absorbing organic growth. It doesn't replace the radiologist shortage as a structural problem, and it isn't a substitute for adequate staffing — but it changes how much volume the radiologists already on staff can absorb before turnaround times start to slip the way SDMI's did. That's the model xAID is built on: an AI-generated draft, reviewed in-house by xAID's own radiologist on every study, delivered ready-to-sign so the client's reading radiologist can finalize it rather than build it from a blank page.
Frequently asked questions
What happened after Intermountain Health acquired Steinberg Diagnostic?
Intermountain Health, a Utah-based nonprofit system, finalized its acquisition of Steinberg Diagnostic Medical Imaging (SDMI) — a 12-location, roughly 40-year-old radiology practice in the Las Vegas Valley — on January 22, 2026. By mid-2026, patients and referring physicians were reporting scan-result delays of up to three weeks, up from the practice's typical 7-to-10-day turnaround, and Intermountain confirmed a reporting backlog.
Why did wait times increase after the acquisition?
Intermountain attributed the backlog to a national radiologist shortage that it said is hitting southern Nevada harder than the rest of the country. Nevada is tied with Oklahoma, Mississippi and Wyoming for the lowest number of radiologists per capita of any state, about 9 per 100,000 people, according to a 2025 Medicus Healthcare Solutions report. SDMI had roughly 30 radiologists and over 550 affiliated staff before the deal; Intermountain says it is now working to add about 20 more radiologists and to speed up licensing, credentialing and onboarding.
Is there broader evidence that hospital acquisitions of physician practices increase wait times?
The evidence is directional rather than definitive. A 2025 U.S. Government Accountability Office review of physician-practice consolidation found stakeholders reporting that wait times for available appointments were sometimes shorter at independent practices than at hospital-owned ones, but GAO said it could not identify studies on consolidation's effect on access that met its methodological standards. Roughly 55% of U.S. physicians were employed by or affiliated with a hospital system in 2024, up from about 26% in 2012, per the Physicians Advocacy Institute.
How can AI-assisted reporting help radiology groups absorb volume growth without a wait-time hit?
AI-assisted reporting produces a structured draft report for a radiologist to review rather than dictate from scratch, cutting the time a radiologist spends per study without cutting a radiologist out of the loop. That gives a practice — consolidated or independent — a way to absorb volume growth from a merger, a new contract, or population growth without a proportional increase in headcount, provided every report still goes through radiologist review before it is ready to sign.
Source: Radiology Business, "Imaging wait times rise after hospital system purchases private radiology practice" (2026); Las Vegas Review-Journal; Intermountain Health; Medicus Healthcare Solutions, 2025 radiologist shortage report; U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-25-107450 (2025). Figures are rounded as reported.