When practices evaluate an MRI system, they reasonably focus on the technology. Field strength, image quality, installation options, finance models. These are the right questions to ask.
But there’s a question that often comes later in the process, if it comes at all: what happens after the system is installed?
- Who do you call when something goes wrong?
- Who trains your new staff when the person who was certified leaves?
- Who helps tell your referring vets about your advanced imaging service?
- Who monitors your system at 11pm on a Friday so you don’t walk in on Monday to an offline scanner?
For Hallmarq customers, the answer to all of those questions is the same: Q-Care.
Q-Care is Hallmarq’s comprehensive customer programme.
It’s included with every system, without exception.
In an industry where post-sale support is often patchy, frequently outsourced and sometimes non-existent, it represents something genuinely unusual: an imaging company that treats its commitment to your practice as a long-term partnership, not a transaction.
What Q-Care actually covers
The easiest way to understand Q-Care is to walk through what a practice actually receives, from first enquiry through to contract term.
Before installation: planning that removes the guesswork
The process starts before any commitment is made. Hallmarq offers a free feasibility study with no contractual obligation. It’s a detailed assessment of your site, your workflow and your installation options, carried out by people who have planned and installed over 170 MRI systems worldwide.
That feasibility study is backed by in-house architectural and project planning expertise. Hallmarq’s team works directly with your chosen contractors, advising on room design, floor loading, access requirements and infrastructure, so you’re not navigating the technical complexity of an MRI installation without specialist guidance. This is not a referral to an external consultant. It’s in-house knowledge, included.
For practices choosing modular room options, the process is simpler still: Hallmarq coordinates delivery and setup, you provide power, internet and a hard surface.
At installation: training that gets you operational fast
Post installation, Hallmarq’s specialist team delivers on-site operator training and certification. The goal is to get your team scanning well as quickly as possible, so the system generates revenue from day one rather than sitting underutilised while staff find their feet.
The training covers system operation, patient preparation and positioning, scan protocol selection and image quality optimisation. It’s designed around the realities of clinical practice, not a classroom curriculum.
Ongoing: technical support that prevents problems before they happen
Hallmarq’s Q-Care programme includes remote monitoring of 25 key system parameters, continuously. This isn’t reactive, it’s designed to identify potential issues before they become failures. The team can often detect and address a problem before your clinical team is even aware of it.
When reactive support is needed, Hallmarq’s Customer Success Team provides real-time multichannel support by phone, email and remote diagnostic tools, with qualified engineers committed to attending on-site when in-person intervention is required.
The 99% uptime guarantee – the only commitment of its kind in the advanced imaging world – is not a marketing claim. It is a company wide operational commitment, backed by the monitoring, engineering and logistics infrastructure to deliver on it.
Hardware coverage extends to wear and tear and accidental damage during normal operation, including replacement coils*. Software updates are delivered at no additional cost for the duration of the contract, meaning the system you install today keeps pace with advances in imaging technology without requiring renegotiation or additional spend.
When staff changes: remote operations service
Staffing is one of the most frequently underestimated operational risks in advanced imaging. Trained operators leave. They get ill. Scheduling doesn’t always work out. In a busy veterinary practice, your MRI scanner shouldn’t sit idle because a single certified person is unavailable.
For our Small Animal sites, Hallmarq’s Remote Operations Service (ROS) addresses this directly. When a trained operator isn’t available, Hallmarq’s own certified MRI technicians can operate the system remotely: running the scan, maintaining image quality and delivering throughput, regardless of what’s happening on your rota.
As Dr Baye Williamson, DVM, DACVIM (Neurology), at Veterinary Emergency + Referral Center (VERC) in Hawaii, puts it:
Remote Operations removes the headache of always having our own trained technicians available to scan. Hallmarq’s Techs know how to maximize image quality and minimize scan times, which is a huge benefit to our busy practice.”
ROS turns a potential vulnerability – the dependence on a small number of trained individuals – into a manageable operational variable.
Growing your service: marketing support and account management
This is the part of Q-Care that most distinguishes Hallmarq from a conventional equipment supplier and the part that is most often undervalued at the point of purchase.
Hallmarq doesn’t just install a system and leave. When your service launches, Hallmarq provides active marketing support: materials, guidance and practical help for communicating your new capability to existing clients and to the referring practices in your area. The goal is to build scan volume as quickly as possible, because the business case for your MRI depends on throughput, and throughput depends on awareness and referral relationships.
Beyond launch, Hallmarq’s commercial team works with you on an ongoing basis: Partnership reviews are put into place to review scan volumes, identify opportunities to grow the referring network, support targeted campaigns and help practices make the most of the service they’ve invested in.
It’s active commercial partnership from a team that understands veterinary imaging, has data on how practices grow their MRI services and has a direct interest in your success.
Learning and community: staying ahead
Q-Care membership includes access to Hallmarq’s online community: a platform for peer exchange, case discussion, training materials and webinars, shared with equine and small animal MRI and CT users worldwide.
Annual clinical user meetings bring customers together to share experiences, review new case evidence and stay current with developments. Expert scan review is available, with Hallmarq’s MRI specialists providing feedback on image quality and helping operators continuously improve their technique.
For a practice that takes its MRI service seriously, this community infrastructure has real value. It connects your team with a global network of specialists working with the same technology, addresses the isolation that can come from running an advanced imaging service in a practice setting, and keeps your operators current in a field that is continuing to evolve.
Why this matters commercially
The case for Q-Care is not just about peace of mind. It is about protecting and maximising the commercial return on a significant capital investment.”
Mick Crosthwaite, CEO Hallmarq Veterinary Imaging
Here’s how that looks with long term ROI in mind:
- Uptime is revenue – A system that’s offline for three days costs you scan fees, disrupts your clinical programme and potentially costs you referring relationships that took time to build. The 99% uptime guarantee, backed by proactive monitoring and fast on-site response, is a commercial commitment as much as a technical one.
- Scan volume is the business case – The break even for both our equine and small animal MRI systems is around two cases per week. Getting there quickly and growing beyond it depends on awareness, referral relationships and effective communication of your capability. That’s what the marketing support and commercial management elements of Q-Care are designed to accelerate.
- Staff risk is real – In a sector where trained MRI operators are not commodity labour, the Remote Operations Service is not a nice to have. It’s a contingency that allows a valuable asset to keep generating revenue regardless of what’s happening on your team.
- Technology doesn’t stand still – Hallmarq’s continuous improvement programme has expanded the diagnostic reach of MRI to materially reduced scan times with AI-enhanced imaging and motion correction software. These advances are delivered through software updates at no additional cost to Q-Care customers. The system you install today improves over the life of your contract.
One supplier, one team, one point of contact
Perhaps the most straightforward commercial argument for Q-Care is this: you deal with one company for everything.
Site planning. Installation. Training. Technical support. Remote monitoring. Engineering. Software updates. Marketing. Parternship reviews. Community access. All of it comes from Hallmarq – a company that specialises exclusively in veterinary imaging, understands the commercial realities of veterinary practice and has been doing this for over 25 years across more than 27 countries.
There are no third-party service contractors to coordinate, no separate training providers to engage, no external marketing agencies to brief on your MRI service launch. The expertise that supports your system is the same expertise that built it.
That simplicity has a value that’s easy to underestimate when you’re comparing specifications on a spreadsheet. It’s also significant once you’re operating a clinical service that needs to run reliably, grow steadily and be supported by people who understand what you’re trying to do.
To find out more about Q-Care and what it could do for your practice, speak with our commercial team now.
*individual contract terms apply
