Joe Mullings l Remember When the Implant Was The Product? Or Was It Just The Thing You Billed?

Bill Hunter wrote something recently about CJR-X that most people read as a comment on orthopedics.

It is not.

It is a comment on where profit lives inside a procedure, and I have been making this argument for a long time in surgical robotics, in structural heart, in the OR itself.

Cardiology actually got there first but ortho is the category where the arithmetic gets settled in public.

Elise Reuter at MedTech Dive reported that Kevin Lobo and Ivan Tornos both said the new Medicare joint replacement model will not pressure implant pricing. No argument with either of them. Ivan has been asked that question for twenty straight quarters and has been right twenty straight times. Ryan Zimmerman at BTIG took the other side and said it could change how hospitals buy.

They are all answering the question they were asked.
The question is too narrow.

Ivan gave the thesis away inside his own defense. Implants are 14 to 15 percent of ASC procedure cost, and the savings come from surgical time, site of care, and readmissions. All of it sits outside the implant.

For decades the back half of a joint replacement was overhead.
In 2028 it will become the margin.

Value provided and value captured are not the same measurement.

Ortho is where you can see it. Cardiology gets there first. Build past the device.

Read the full article here: Remember When the Implant Was The Product? Or Was It Just The Thing You Billed?