Hospitals kick sales reps out of the OR

[anonymous]

The more things change, the more they remain the same, Reps will always drive business...there is too much money at stake.

 

[anonymous]

I'll never forget in the mid 90's being called into a meeting with Purchasing, OR Buyer, OR Supervisor and Central Supply. All the ortho companies were present and basically the hospital was trying to shake down every company for discounts and push to have an implant approved by Purchasing before being implanted in suegery. I asked who from Purchasing would be on call to authorize the implant and come to the hospital at 3 am when we had a trauma case. Many of our cases were after 6pm and on weekends and holidays etc. You almost could here a pin drop as nobody in Purchasing spoke up to say who would be the after hours administrator to approve implant cost. As anybody who worked in this field knew that once you bailed out a doctor at 3 am and held his hand through the whole procedure we quite often got stiffed by the hospital in getting a purchase order or they took weeks to give us one. Universally every rep in that large room shared same stories and the meeting ended as they would leave things as is because nobody in Purchasing was going to show up at 3am and deny a doctor and patient an implant. Honestly those Purchasing people had no clue what we did. Fortunately the scrub techs and OR personnel supported us as none of them would take the time to learn how to assemble tools and equipment with the implants.

 

[anonymous]

I'll never forget in the mid 90's being called into a meeting with Purchasing, OR Buyer, OR Supervisor and Central Supply. All the ortho companies were present and basically the hospital was trying to shake down every company for discounts and push to have an implant approved by Purchasing before being implanted in suegery. I asked who from Purchasing would be on call to authorize the implant and come to the hospital at 3 am when we had a trauma case. Many of our cases were after 6pm and on weekends and holidays etc. You almost could here a pin drop as nobody in Purchasing spoke up to say who would be the after hours administrator to approve implant cost. As anybody who worked in this field knew that once you bailed out a doctor at 3 am and held his hand through the whole procedure we quite often got stiffed by the hospital in getting a purchase order or they took weeks to give us one. Universally every rep in that large room shared same stories and the meeting ended as they would leave things as is because nobody in Purchasing was going to show up at 3am and deny a doctor and patient an implant. Honestly those Purchasing people had no clue what we did. Fortunately the scrub techs and OR personnel supported us as none of them would take the time to learn how to assemble tools and equipment with the implants.

Isn’t it funny how ridiculously strict protocols go out the window once accountability is involved?

 

[anonymous]

Isn’t it funny how ridiculously strict protocols go out the window once accountability is involved?

The look on the Purchasing Dept Director when asked if we could have his after hour pager number to come down to hospital at 2 in the morning to negotiate price with doctor and patient and OR was priceless. It was a total shakedown and they expected every company to fold and give them their 50% discount they requested.

 

[anonymous]

I had a hospital force one of my busy surgeons to use a total hip system made by a company that emphasized a repless business model. I looked at their instrument trays and quickly thought, “This will be interesting.” It took about a month before the surgeon was threatening to leave the hospital if he couldn’t go back to using my stuff. When I walked back in for my first day of cases, two nurses said, “Thank god you’re back. It was a total shit show.”