I’m down south in FL and we just hired a senior trauma rep from synthes to come aboard and be our Dex Mgr. Really nice guy and very transparent about his expectations which I personally appreciate given peoples hidden agendas and what have you these days. This is what he told me, Arthrex is going into trauma or I shouldn’t really say is cause they are in it already. The Dex rep today as we know it is going to look completely different 2yrs from now. I was told we have a bunch of trauma type products such as femoral nail to name a few that are coming out within the next year. He was very clear on what direction Arthrex is going and that is to compete with the Stryker’s/Synthes/Wright Medical/Paragon you catch my drift. We will be expected to leverage our existing relationships combined with our brand recognition and new product lines to compete in that arena. To ensure we compete in this area trauma will be added into everyone’s quota starting new fiscal year in July 2021 so essentially 6 more months. At our distributorship we already have made on call schedules for all the Dex reps including hand and wrist managers. I know this post was originally about the role of hand and wrist Mgr but I wanted to give you the macro view of what and where Dex is going in the next year. Hand and Wrist is also getting some new hardware and I know the expectations and goals for hand and wrist are aggressive to say the least. Here we have a couple guys that crank our DRP but from what I’ve been told hardware for hand and wrist is where Arthrex struggles as a whole. I also heard from my Mgr that he spoke with Mark Lisi as well and the message is regardless of your role everyone is expected to help build out the trauma business and take call. So to answer your question is the hand and wrist Mgr role going away? I don’t know but it will certainly look different for all of us come next year. The expectation is we are distal extremities reps who also cover trauma. So hopefully that’s another product line we can get paid in and make some more money. The downside is if your not willing or want to be a trauma rep the answer is you have no choice. The next 6 months is a ramp up to leverage those relationships and get in front of guys to start getting into those trauma cases. The Tightrope XP is what we have been told to leverage to get into these cases where guys are doing Tib/Fib compound Fx’s and once we have a gamma nail we are going to be taking those calls and covering those cases. They took it out of our hands now. Like I mentioned earlier in this post our Dex Mgr has already made a schedule and we rotate amongst all the Dex reps and hand and wrist Mgr on who takes call for the weekend. This pandemic has cost everyone millions of dollars in lost revenue. Arthrex has never been shy about launching and going after new lines of business and earning the right to fight for that business. Arthrex makes a great product set that is easy for us to sell. I hope this helps. Wish you all the best
