HOSPITALS EVICT SALES REPS FROM ORs (Orthopedics This Week)
A growing number of hospitals are excusing sales representatives from the operating room and are educating their own employees to provide technical assistance to doctors during surgery, writes Jaimy Lee in Modern Healthcare. Representatives from medical device manufacturers have, in the past, routinely been present in operating rooms to reply to questions about the product the surgeon is implanting.
Lee reports that by switching to a rep-less model, hospitals are both cutting costs and improving quality. Loma Linda University Medical Center is a case where the hospital claims to have decreased the prices of implants by about 50%. Lee writes that 90% of the approximately 400 hip and knee replacement surgeries performed each year at Loma Linda are done using the rep-less, direct service model.
Loma Linda hospital employs two in-house orthopedic device technicians—trained by the device manufactures—who manage the implant devices from the moment they arrive at the hospital. “Sales reps have created this necessity for themselves with the surgeon, and we’re saying it’s not as necessary as everyone thinks it is,” says Justin Free...
