I saw this on a post as well: Is MD Buyline owned by Stryker? Do you have any experience dealing with them?
If you have experience 'working with' MD Buyline, you are not a sales rep, but a hospital employee-- most likely in the materials management. So, not sure why you would ask that. As for if Stryker owns MD Buyline, that is beyond an ignorant question. Stryker isn't always the top picked on MD Buyline, and you'll see prices that reflect Stryker being much more expensive for most products. Not something most hospitals want to see. MD Buyline is inaccurate at best, anyway. Their research is usually based off of only a few entries given to them by participating hospitals. The field research results I've read from them have been a joke at best. The prices they reflect are usually so all over the board that it would be hard for any hospital to really get much use out of it. Plus, if Stryker owned it, don't you think it would find a way to spin Service, Price and 5 year cost analysis in its favor? Whoever asked this question originally must have seen one small snippet after losing a trial to a Stryker product.
Listen. Don't be naive. Just because you work for Stryker, doesn't mean you know exactly what the company is doing. I heard these rumors a year ago about MD Buyline and U.S. Final Pass favoring Stryker. There is no proof that they are Stryker owned, but the fact is they like Stryker. Just because they choose another vendor once in a while, doesn't mean they are not Stryker owned. Are you aware that MD Buyline makes money off vendors? As them directly. Let's see what they say.
The cash cow for MD Buyline is the membership costs it garners from hospitals, and yes, vendors. So what? As a rep, I can't get membership to it-- and only a few people in marketing can. In fact, out of the 3 divisions I have/do work with, only one person at each dvision has a membership. It's not a matter of the cost, it's a matter of MD Buyline only allowing ANY vendor limited access. So, if there's well over 15K people working for Stryker, why are only 4 allowed membership if it's owned by us? Don't you think as a rep I'd love to know what the price point of my competition is? MD Buyline releases annual and sometimes quarterly reports on products. I've seen reports on products from my division and a few others. Guess what-- we didn't rank the highest. Again, my naivete I guess precludes me from seeing through the smokescreen that is Stryker management and our excellent cloak and dagger marketing department that has kept this under wraps. Finally, don't you think the FDA would have stepped in if Stryker owned MDB? With the heat Stryker produced after filing suit against the FDA, they would have found something. And to say Stryker owning an 'arbitrator' for hospital capital equipment knowledge goes beyond unethical. Conflict of interest doesn't even begin to describe that. Do your research, MDB is owned by a family: the Malcolmsons. No Stryker name anywhere.
I'm not sure I follow. You are saying that only 4 people in Stryker know price points from MD Buyline. Doesn't it take only an e-mail or phone call to one of these 4 people to get the info you need? And the FDA... they can't even get Levitra and Cheerios from stopping their snake oil ads. It doesn't matter if the Malcomsons, on paper, own MD Buyline. What counts is who controls MD Buyline and how it helped get Stryker 80% market share.
I don't think MD Buyline or US Final Pass or any of these "arbitrators" are owned by Stryker. It is an interesting story that a Rep who lost a deal to Stryker could tell his boss.
Okay, I'll answer these one at a time (and I'm not being sarcastic): 1. Email or phone call-- I've tried. With the FDA, DOJ and every other gov group and watchdog looking over emails on a monthly basis (trust me, we get notifications that we cannot erase emails all the time), anything like that happening would generate a huge lawsuit. These findings are copyrighted-- you can't simply make copies and send them around. While I'm not saying that our corporate officers are refusing to send out copies out of respect for copyright laws, I'm saying they don't want their asses sued. So, if Stryker owned MDB, it wouldn't be any problem. And trust me, I've tried many times to get copies. The only reason I've seen the ones that I have was when I worked in-house in marketing and I happened to sneak a peak at them when they were on the VP's desk. 2. There is a HUGE difference between false or misleading advertising and outright criminal activities. While I'm not saying one is worse than the other, I'm saying one involves huge fines and lawsuits (Pharma), and one involves the same with applied jail time. We all want to win, but I'm not going to jail to do it, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone in house who would be willing to. 3. 80% market share? Yeah, on one or two products. Stryker is and will for a long time be thought of as an Ortho implant company. I don't give a damn what product you are selling, ask an investor and they will point to implants. If not, why did Stryker's stock take a hit when the trumped up cup implant so-called recall took place? At the same time our Endo and Surgical divisions were KILLING it in the market. And, as much as we wish we had, Stryker has no where near that market share in implants. So, I'm willing to bet you sell either power equipment or possibly Endo cameras. And the possible offshoot you work in the EMS cot market. Those are the only ones I know of that have that type of market share. Now, that being said, I will go back to my original point that if Stryker owns MDB, why wouldn't we show all of our products as number 1 best in market? I won't defend or even surmise that the person(s) claiming Stryker owns MDB are competitive reps using it as a crutch for a lost sale. As far as I know it was an ex Stryker employee grasping at straws to get Stryker in as much hot water as possible. It's pretty rare you see someone leave Stryker on a good note (that's what happens when you hire only Type A personality reps).
This is a free country, so it is OK to ask hard questions about a publicly traded company like Stryker. With that said, let me ask this hard question: Does Stryker have an employee sitting in HPG?
Are you talking about the GPO Healthtrust? Who cares if they do? HPG doesn't just deal with Stryker, so if Stryker has someone on the board, I'm sure any and all other vendors would, too. Even if it was only Stryker run and all C-Level persons wore a Stryker namebadge, what difference does it make? A hospital doesn't have to pick a certain GPO, that's why there are dozens of them. Also, if HPG was all Stryker, but could get Stryker products to a participating hospital at a much more reduced discount than open market, than the hospital wins outright. If it's a matter of a competitive product being better than the Stryker product, and the hospital can prove it, than they owe it to the patient to go outside of the contract and get the competitive model(s). AVAMED, Joint Commission and a host of other groups would come down with Thor's hammer on the hospital if it was proven otherwise. Look, we all know that the company's with the bigger capital will usually win out. And generally, it's because they make a better product than the smaller, cheaper competitors. It's all a matter of who can shove more into their R&D budget. That's why there's usually only a few competitors in each market segment. So, if MDT happens to own Broadlane (hypothetical here people—they don’t), and I'm going against them, and I can prove through white papers and clinician backing my product is better, the hospital will go with me. Now, and this is a huge comma here, if I can't prove my product is better than MDT's, than the hospital is going to go with their Broadlane contract and get that specific product for a much more reduced price than I can offer. And whether you like to admit it or not, other than biased rhetoric we all spew out, very rarely does one product offer irrefutable better outcomes. Statistics don’t lie—just those who use them. If you don't like it, go out there and create a union and fight it. As far as the 'This is a free country, so it is OK to ask hard questions about a publicly traded company like Stryker' comment, well, you're damn right it is (much to the chagrin of the idiot President in office who is trying like hell to make us Socialist). So, you and anyone else are free to make any comments you like. However, expect a rebuttal to the contrary. Also, if someone makes an inflammatory comment about Stryker, you can expect the response to be that much more heated. As I would expect an employee of any company to do. So far, this thread hasn’t gotten into a childish f-bomb dropping knuckle-dragging rampage of idiocy like I see on a lot of other threads on this board. I give it maybe 2 or 3 more entries before someone with an IQ lower than my waist size ruins it. Not sure what the line is, but I’ll take the under. Whomever has been responding, please continue. I welcome a debate over an arguement any day of the week.
All right, let's talk Orthopaedics. HPG kept most vendors from competing against Stryker's fake HD system. Karl Storz was allowed to showcase their true HD system, yet most of the time it still lost against Stryker's 1188 Fake HD. Stryker knew 1188HD was not true HD, which is why it came out with 1288HD. How in the world did Stryker win against Storz's true HD using 1188 Fake HD? My guess is it is because of HPG.
I don't know the specifics and I don't sell Endo equipment, so I can't really venture a truly educated guess. However, if the hospital was updating their entire OR, by partnering with the Comm rep, everything from wiring, booms, routers and the endo equipment is one stop shopping. I don't know if Storz offers the same, but my understanding is that they don't. So, if the choice of which to purchase on a service side came down, I'm pretty sure Stryker would win out. Also, I've seen the Storz HD and the Stryker 1188 in action many times. From an Ortho standpoint, if the surgeons didn't want the Storz or they were non-committal, there you go. Or, if the Storz rep didn't get the right orthopod champion (someone who pounds their fist on the table isn't always a champion-- I've run into that issue many times), then he lost out. And, the only complaint I've ever heard about the 1188 vs. the Storz scopes was not by Orthopods, it was by ENT surgeons and it was the absorption of light by the red blood. Which, when put on the right setting was fixed quickly. Finally, if the rep for Stryker was actually liked better, and there was no clinical data showing that HD proves a better patient outcome, it happens again.But, again, I don't sell Endo so I can't really defend/refute the purchase. However, if you are basing your entire foundation on one deal gone to another rep...
While I see some good debate going back and forth in this thread, the discussions here tend to be representative of Stryker on the whole. No one in the industry questions Stryker product, on the whole they make great items and have shown the ability to expand nicely into other areas beyond Ortho. Stryker's problem stems from an obvious and undeniable shared arrogance of it's employees that transcends anything I have seen from any other MD company. I was for a time a large share holder but when the FDA came knocking and they made the brilliant move to counter sue the government I dumped my holdings, thank god, and moved on. Just reading the daily posts in these forms I see charge after accusation of Stryker reps paying off doctor's, employees taking bizarre personality tests to get hired, countless products going on hold, endless claims of improper conduct by management, etc. etc. As a person who has worked in the medical industry for over 30 years at different hospitals caring for thousands of patients, I wonder if any of you working for Stryker ever take a step back and look at both how you are acting and the image you are presenting for your company. I have forwarded many of these discussions to my colleagues and co workers and even confronted our local rep with many questions I have seen raised here. Not to embellish on hyperbole, but your company from an outsiders view appears to be falling apart. I miss the old Stryker that you could count on to always do the right thing and take care of it's customers. I won't go into specifics but we have seen several of your products of late, across several different product lines, outright fail or be on endless back order. I'm not sure what has happened, but I do know that the company I see both represented here now and in my daily work experience is a far cry from the one I knew many years ago who made an amazing cast cutter.
Great post. As a former Stryker employee, once you take a step back and take the blinders off, you see the corrupt practices and arrogance of the organization. Veteran reps will say all the time the changes they have seen over the years.
How much money has Stryker set aside right now to pay off injured patients and the government? When will the next shoe drop? The above posters are correct in my opinion. Since Ned Lipes left Ortho and John Brown left Kzoo both loyalty and integrity has declined. Some really good people have been betrayed by management. Remember, payback is a $itch.
