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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