Q3 2018 Innovative Health Newsletter

 

2018 US News & World Report Honor Roll

Every year, US News & World Report publishes their Honor Roll of the top 20 hospitals in the United States. This year, Innovative Health is proud to be the reprocessing partner for 5 of these.

 

EP Lab Digest Appearance

In its September issue, EP Lab Digest published a “Spotlight Interview” with St. Bernards Medical Center, where the Director of Cardiac Electrophysiology, Devi G. Nair says the following about Innovative Health: “We use Innovative Health for reprocessing catheters; this has helped us cut down our cost per case in a very safe and efficient manner”. We are proud to be your partner!

 

De-mystifying Reprocessing: Videos

Innovative Health has produced a number of videos that de-mystify what single-use device reprocessing is and how hospitals can participate in reprocessing programs. See videos here and here.

 

AGILIS™ NXT Steerable Introducer

Over the past few months, our reprocessing partners have reported a design change made to the Agilis introducer sheath. This was likely completed in an effort to address customer concerns, such as crossing profile or trackability. Unfortunately these changes have contributed to a decreased durability of some models and limited the supply of good devices for customers to reprocess. Fortunately, Abbott (St. Jude Medical) has supplemented their Agilis line with two new models, G408320 and G408321, that incorporate an “improved kink resistance”. These may replace the commonly used small and medium curl 71cm sheaths (408309/408310) that faced the highest reject rates in reprocessing. We encourage physicians to use the new models, as their improved quality should enhance both performance and savings.

 

Sensor-enabled catheters and Biosense case support

In a letter to one of our customers, a Biosense Webster Rep writes: “We cannot support any sensor-based catheter that is not reprocessed with BWI. This is because we cannot verify the accuracy of that catheter if it has been reprocessed by another company. This would include the Pentaray NAV, Lasso NAV, SoundStar and DecaNav. Additionally, reprocessing with another company can have effects of a fiscal nature. It is worth noting that any dollars spent on disposables that are reprocessed by other companies takes away from the spend with BWI. Being that we have a tier-based pricing structure based on annual spend, this could mean decreased discounts on OEM products.” Ironically, catheter accuracy is NOT impacted by reprocessing. The threat to increase hospital costs if the hospital dares to save money through reprocessing is revealing: This is not about patient care. It is about profitability…

 

Continued collaboration with Medline Renewal

Innovative Health and Medline Renewal have entered into a five-year agreement to continue our collaboration on our single-use device reprocessing program. The joint reprocessing initiative aims at improving the performance of medical device reprocessing programs, which often do not provide the optimal savings results for the hospital. Read the entire press release here. We are excited to continue our work together!

 

Millenium Research Group (MRG) Report calls out Innovative Health

In the newest MRG report, the analysists write: “Innovative Health, a relatively new company, has recently received FDA approvals to market various reprocessed EP diagnostic catheters, with these approvals accounting for more than half of all the medical devices covered that have been FDA approved for reprocessing from the second half of 2016 to beginning of 2018. As a result, the company is well positioned to take some share away from Stryker Sustainability Solutions and SterilMed, the only other two players within the reprocessed EP diagnostic catheter market; because this segment is the most lucrative of the reprocessed device markets, the company is therefore in a solid position to gain a notable overall market share in the US.”

 

FDA Clearances and new product families

Since the ViewFlex clearance, Innovative Health has been able to add 6 new product families to our portfolio of devices that we can reprocess. Our DecaNav clearance was a milestone, as it builds out our diagnostic catheters from Biosense Webster.

Innovative Health currently has seven (7) 510(k) submissions under review with FDA. Don’t forget to ask the other reprocessors what they have in their pipeline.

 

Soundstar eco ICE catheter

Original device manufacturers become more and more sophisticated in “locking,” especially their expensive sensor-enabled devices, such as the Soundstar eco. Innovative Health’s engineering team has succeeded in “un-locking” this device, so that we can now offer every model of Biosense Webster’s popular catheter and secure added savings for our partner hospitals.

 

Innovative Health in the press

The media continues to pay attention to Innovative Health. In August, Medical Product Outsourcing published our review of the 2018 Heart Rhythm Society conference, and on September 19, Forbes brought a story about restrictive innovation where CEO Rick Ferreira was quoted: Technology innovation in AF Ablation has opened up the opportunity for us to revolutionize the treatment of heart disease, but its impact is confounded by commercial practices that effectively restrict rather than expand access.” Mysteriously, the article disappeared two days later, something we have discussed on our blog.