I wish doctors would read this because this is a great topic. Doctors that consult for Arthrex are not the top doctors. It’s mostly second Teir doctors that are getting trips paid for and making a consulting fee to help at a lab or train sales reps. It’s a joke. Arthrex will pay anyone to consult and honestly it’s shady.
bingo ! Spot on and podiatrists are leading the way with this , all looking for a hand out . 2 other companies that have a million consultants are both Paragon 28 and Mimedx.
it seems in our area they promise a lot of consulting "activity" and come out of the gate hot, get the business, and then sign up another while decreasing the contributions to the first guy. Pretty smart business model but it's been pissing surgeons off when they don't live up to the expectations. Especially since it is understood that if you're a consultant you need to use as much Arthrex product as possible. One surgeon was told he needed to be exclusive
I’ve too noticed this. A couple of things I’ve noticed in PA in which the Arthrex distributor will do. (1) They approach a surgeon, a sports medicine doc in an ortho group, and promise them “consulting”. The surgeon will then do 1 talk to the local Arthrex reps on how he uses their sports medicine anchors in the shoulder. The surgeon believes he’s a consultant, uses all Arthrex, and pushes Arthrex to the rest of his group. If there is a DPM in that group, especially a younger guy, he’s almost coerced to use them. (2) They will approach a busy foot and ankle surgeon, have them do 1 local talk in another Arthrex distributorship. So for example, the PA surgeon “consultant” will do a small talk and/or lab for a NYC Arthrex distributor and vise versa. In the short term, this works great. Pisses a lot of surgeons off in the long term. One of the other reasons they are able to do this is because they turn over new products so quickly. You can approach multiple surgeons about speaking on a new product, and something will stick. I do believe people are “waking up” to their methods, but it takes time. Thank you.
I have at least 11 consultants in my territory. It is how we are able to survive against the others. Thank God for the Naples trip too. Who the hell cares if it is BS. I need the dough. My student loan is brutal.
I would bet that the consultant agreements between surgeons and corporate are above board. Now the consulting agreements with the individual distributors are probably as crooked as a box of fishhooks. They should start looking at the distribution level. No telling what they will find.
All the consultant payments are being done at the local level and not being reported. Go look on the medical payments website and see if you find any of them. That insulates the corporate level people when it all finally hits the fan. It's genius at the highest unethical levels.
I always wonder if they are smart enough claim all of there consulting agreements/payments on there taxes.
