"The AccuScan is not particularly invasive or dangerous. It's just that the current medical dogma doesn't recommend it. They're loathe to do a lot of preventative stuff, which they see as 'needless' testing."

Kevin Bischoff, spokesman for Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah, said his company does not contract with "free-standing" centers like AccuScan partly because the insurer sees those types of procedures as a duplication of services.

"Our responsibility is to try to keep health-care costs down for our customers," Bischoff said. "When these centers open that compete with these (traditional) facilities, well, we already have these facilities. We don't need more."

Bischoff also said there is no data to indicate that the "preventative" tests are effective from a clinical or a cost standpoint.

"The clinically significant rate — the number of times that they pick up something clinically significant is very low," Bischoff said. "In fact, you're more likely to find things that result in unnecessary testing. The rate of a false positive is very high. There are more and better ways to spend health-care dollars."

Hunter disagrees.

"I was only 50 years old. I was pretty healthy. I don't smoke," he said. "Who would have recommended that (test)? But the AccuScan prevented me from having a heart attack. Not just having the stent put in, but the lifestyle changes. I changed my whole lifestyle and got on a whole new road to health."

Mark Fotheringham, spokesman for the Utah Medical Association, said that so far, the association isn't concerned about free-standing CT or MRI facilities.

"As long as their personnel are adequately trained, the UMA wouldn't have a problem with what they're doing," Fotheringham said. "If they step outside the scope of their practice, then we'd have a problem.

"If a place like AccuScan didn't have certified radiologists to interpret the scans, if there was just someone back there taking pictures, then we'd have a problem with that. So far, we haven't had one."

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E-mail: jnii@desnews.com