Why is that salesman in the operating room for your knee replacement? (Washington Post)
(Jeannie Phan for The Washington Post)
By Sandra G. Boodman November 14
They are a little-known presence in many operating rooms, offering technical expertise to surgeons installing new knees, implanting cardiac defibrillators or performing delicate spine surgery.
Often called device reps — or by the more cumbersome and less transparent moniker “health-care industry representatives” — these salespeople are employed by the companies that make medical devices: Stryker, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic, to name a few. Their presence in the OR, particularly common in orthopedics and neurosurgery, is part of the equipment packages that hospitals typically buy.
Many “people who don’t work in health care don’t realize that industry reps are sometimes in the OR,” said Josephine Wergin, a risk management analyst for the ECRI Institute, a Pennsylvania nonprofit that conducts research on medical subjects for the health-care industry. “A lot of times they are the real experts on their products.”
Unlike rotating teams of nurses and surgical techs, reps are a consistent presence, experts say, often functi...
