Re: Ossur Affiliated Facilities

Re: Ossur Affiliated Facilities

Brett Saunders

7/9/2003

Thank you for a well written and considered response supporting your
decision to take part in Ossur's program.

I appreciated reading your posting and respect your right to make business
decisions for your business.

My issue is not with any company that chooses to take part in the program,
it is the business practice of Ossur for contacting patients under my care
to attempt to direct them to my competition if I do not pay the fee to join
the program. Actually, I was not even offered the chance to join the
program prior to the first 'printing' of the guides, not that I would have
taken part, but the offer was not made.

As far as the posting of Dr. Smith, I too was dismayed to see his reaction
because of the financial incentives that some companies use to promote
selected products to their practitioners. For example, to exclude one
(Ossur) provider over another (Hanger) may not make for the best in patient
care. How is a prescribing physician to know why one component is better
for a particular patient? We need to educate them and be willing to justify
each component used, the advantages as well as disadvantages, and how the
practitioner's choices are 'best' for that patient.

Hopefully this program will benefit your facility. Would you consider
positing about it's effect on your business in a year?

Brett R. Saunders, CPO, FAAOP



-----Original Message-----
From: Orthotics and Prosthetics List [mailto:<Email Address Redacted>]On
Behalf Of Matt Johnson
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 10:22 PM
To: <Email Address Redacted>
Subject: [OANDP-L] Ossur Affiliated Facilities


I have been observing all the discord regarding the Ossur issue over the
past
several weeks and am amazed by the attitudes of many practitioners.

I am an ABC Certified Orthotist & Prosthetist and the owner of a medium
sized
ABC Accredited O&P facility. Our company is an AOPA member, our
practitioners
are, Academy members and I personally am a member of NAAOP. We have
subscribed

to the Ossur marketing program for a one-year trial period.

I choose to post this without revealing my name, as I do not wish to be
crucified publicly by zealots on this list. Believe me, this is not normally
my

style, but after reading the scathing knee-jerk response by Dr. William
Smith,
It seemed prudent to do so. It would seem to me that an educated and
respected
member of the rehab community would be above public flogging and punishment
without due process. Someone should enlighten him about the Hanger Value
Rite
Plan!

You might ask, why did our company become involved with this promotion? We
chose


to do so because we as an independent compete every day with Hanger. In case
you


are not aware, Hanger is around 1/3 of the traditional O&P industry. If an
entity owned 1/3 of the automobile, farm production, distribution, shipping,
hospital, surgery or any other business, the public outcry would be
enormous.
Again O&P is so small that we do not garner much attention. Hanger attempted
to

strong-arm Ossur to sell to them at a much greater price break than any
other
O&P facility could command. Why Ossur chose to refuse the price pressure
will
probably never be known, but the result was that Hanger completely boycotted
their products via financial penalties on their facility managers. Ossur has
responded by going head to head in marketing with Hanger. I applaud Ossur on
their fortitude!

As a competitor to Hanger, I have to utilize all legitimate resources
available

to me to survive. We feel we will always win when we are allowed to compete
on a


level field, but the field is never level. We do not have the economy of
scale
HGR does, nor the IT people, nor the financial people, nor the benefits
people,

nor the billing people, nor the advertising budget and so forth ad nauseam.
We
do however have a fierce commitment to patient care that will never be
compromised to fit into a 30% plan.

If you as an independent cannot see this, you had better wake up and look
down
the tracks, as there is a freight train barreling right through our industry
and


you might just end up a casualty.
To answer anticipated questions, Ossur has some excellent products, but in
reality our facilities overall use very little Ossur product. We use what
fills

the prescription and will provide what we consider to be the best clinical
solution for the patient. The numbers required to participate in the Ossur
Facilities listing is small. Our practitioners are not pressured to buy from
Ossur, or from any other supplier.

I suspect Ossur has made a serious error in marketing, but then I also
thought
Bock made a serious mistake a few years ago when they pulled the rug out
from
under their long term distributors, only to make a deal later with SPS
(Hanger).


But who am I to know, I am just an old limb and brace maker trying to do the
best for my clientele and survive in a very competitive environment.

Again, I sincerely apologize to the group for the necessity of posting this
without a recognizable identity.




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