Sacred Heart to lay off 90 as Inland assumes X-ray, scanning services

About 90 employees of Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center will lose their jobs after radiology provider Inland Imaging announced it will take over X-ray and scanning services at the area’s largest hospital.

Inland Imaging CEO Steve Duvoisin said he hopes to hire back many of the laid-off workers, but he couldn’t yet say how many.

The Sacred Heart workers will continue working until Dec. 31, when the switch is expected to occur, according to a Providence Health Care spokesperson.

For more than three decades, Inland Imaging has been among the area’s primary providers of MRIs, ultrasound testing, X-rays and CT scans. It performs about 50,000 CT scans annually at its seven locations in the Spokane area.

In 1998, it formally became Inland Imaging LLC.

Providence Health Care has been in discussions with Inland Imaging for months. Both groups agreed this week to move forward with the deal, said Elaine Couture, Providence Health Care’s CEO.

Duvoisin said Inland Imaging has 25 workers providing services at Sacred Heart already.

Looking ahead, he said he hoped to hire a “substantial number of the current (Sacred Heart) employees.”

“We are starting the interview and hiring process over the next coming weeks,” he added.

He said the arrangement “gives us the best chance to be prepared for the changes coming in health care” over the next five to 10 years.

Couture, in an email, said the decision allows Sacred Heart to spend more of its resources on patient services. “We believe this change will strengthen our ability to provide the highest quality patient care,” she said.

Since 2003, Inland Imaging has performed all the inpatient and outpatient imaging at Providence’s Holy Family Hospital except for PET scans and other specialized scans.

Inland Imaging also performs all outpatient imaging at the new Providence Medical Park in Spokane Valley.

The decision does not affect radiologists at Sacred Heart. Inland Imaging provides MRI staffing and scanning at Colville’s Mount Carmel Hospital and X-ray staff at local urgent care centers.