While orthopedic distributors play a crucial role in providing products and services to hospitals and surgeons, the shifting healthcare landscape is making their day-to-day work more complex. Today, new orthopedic technology must clear hospital evaluations, fit within reimbursement models and demonstrate both clinical and financial value. At the same time, orthopedic procedures are shifting to ASCs, creating new inventory, logistics and support challenges.
Managing inventory, giving guidance in the O.R., and building surgeon relationships remain essential, but distributors must also understand hospital economics, facilitate technology adoption, and coordinate increasingly complex logistics. Distributors that can adapt to the new environment will be better positioned to grow alongside the ever-evolving orthopedic market. These are important lessons for reps, as well as orthopedic companies that seek to hire strong distributors.
Market Dynamics Create New Opportunities
As healthcare systems place greater scrutiny on the price of technologies and consolidate their product spend, surgeon interest alone can no longer secure adoption. This shift places expectations on distributors to understand the clinical priorities that drive product selection while addressing the cost concerns of hospital decision-makers and showing the overall value of new products.
Thomas Fleetwood, Chief Executive Officer of CrossLink Life Sciences, a large U.S. orthopedic distributor, said conversations with surgeons today tend to center on technology and practice economics.
“Across both topics, the questions are how to make procedures more efficient and predictable, deliver better patient outcomes and capture data that proves those outcomes,” Mr. Fleetwood said. “With declining reimbursement and a large number of cases to complete, surgeons are always looking for ways to use their time more efficiently.”
Distributors therefore face growing pressure to justify a product’s cost and demonstrate its value to hospitals, even when surgeons strongly support the solution.
by Kathie Taylor | ORTHOWORLD
Image Credit: Kathie Taylor | ORTHOWORLD