Pay for performance (P4P) comes up over and over again in reimbursement discussions. In the May 2006 edition of Orthopedics Today, there is an in-depth review of what hospitals, surgeons and other stakeholders should know about P4P. As a reminder,... more
An article in the New York Times reports on the issue of inadequate teamwork in the hospital environment according to a study cited in the Annals of Surgery and The Journal of the American College of Surgeons. The study surveyed... more
Biomet was founded twenty-nine years ago with a superb management team including Dane Miller, Ph.D. Dr. Miller became the iconic figure of Biomet and has led the Company on a very successful run with a current market capitalization of $9.5... more
Any microeconomics 101 course worth its salt will try to provide examples of market failure. The most potent market failure arguments can tied to real world problems of information economics where one of the more famous examples used is "adverse... more
Our current forecast for the orthopedic industry projects continued long term growth of 15%. For 2006, we expect growth to be slightly below this trend, at 12%. Despite continued strength in other segments of the industry, hip and knee reconstruction... more
The HealthpointCapital blog is read by thousands of people of varied backgrounds: physicians, patients, caregivers, device company employees, consultants and investors. Based on some of the feedback on the blog we see, we felt it was worth clearing up some... more
The issue of patent protection is high on the minds of people in both the orthopedics industry and US business. Today the lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) ranted about how the patent system, designed to spur... more
There has been a lot of focus over the past six months on pricing in the orthopedic device market. Two topics generating fear have been (1) HCA's purchasing practices and (2) gainsharing. This week, Melissa Davis of The Street.com wrote... more
During the middle of 2005, several journalists covering the orthopedic market from Reuters, TheStreet.com, Forbes and The Wall Street Journal Online were harping on the problems facing orthopedic manufacturers. These problems included heavy pricing pressure from hospital administrators, a Department... more
In the November issue of the British Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery there were two very interesting editorials: "Ethics in Orthopaedic Surgery" by the Presidents' Council of the Combined Orthopaedic Associations and "Which Research is to be Believed" by... more
It has never been empirically proven that insider (e.g. management and director) buying of a company's stock guarantees that the stock poised to rise, but it has also never been proven to be a bad sign. That's stating the obvious.... more
Is Wall Street's shrill reaction to hip and knee implant pricing concerns overblown? Even with sophisticated econometric tools such a question is difficult to evaluate because we are dealing with an expectations driven phenomenon. So we have our doubts about... more
There is no denying that healthcare costs continue to accelerate in the U.S. We would argue most of these costs are justified given the continuing technological advancements made within the entire healthcare arena including medical devices and biotechnology. However, we... more
As many of you now know, the venerable (and world's largest) non-profit tissue bank Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation (MTF) announced on Monday that is had proposed to acquire all of the outstanding common stock of Osteotech, Inc. (Nasdaq: OSTE) for $6.25... more
Doctors as consultants. This is a concept that is very common in the medical device sector. In fact, it is an area that the DoJ is very interested in. Today the New York Times published a story about doctors-as-consultants with... more
[Editor's note: We welcome attorney Richard Zall of Mintz, Levin as a guest blogger to answer a question posed by a reader in response to Joane Goodroe's Gainsharing post earlier this week. See Zall's profile here.] Interested in your thoughts... more
[Editor's note: We welcome attorney Richard Zall of Mintz, Levin as a guest blogger to answer a question posed by a reader in response to Joane Goodroe's Gainsharing post earlier this week. See Zall's profile here.] Interested in your thoughts... more
The first time I realized that pricing in orthopedics was a controversial topic was my initial meeting with an O.R. purchasing manager at a large Philadelphia hospital. I had submitted an invoice for a total hip arthroplasty which happened to... more
This week HealthpointCapital had lots of private equity activity, as evidenced by the flurry of press releases just below. You may be missing the regular flow of orthopedic news and commentary on the blog, and/or wondering what our press releases... more
I was struck by economist Paul Krugman's article "America's Senior Moment" in the most recent New York Review of Books. In the article Krugman assails the Bush Administration's push for social security "privatization" with the fervor of a campus radical,... more
Direct-to-consumer advertising has become the most powerful means of marketing pharmaceuticals over the last decade. For years we have seen these strange advertisements which typically only mention the name of a drug and the manufacturer, but withhold any information regarding... more
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