Dive Brief:
- It's very common to find sales reps in hospital operating room, scrubbed in and wearing masks, helping staff use unfamiliar medical devices.
- The ECRI Institute, a non-profit healthcare research house, suggests that hospitals should develop policies to govern what sales reps can do in the OR, as their presence can pose a risk management issue.
- Some hospitals have already begun to set limits on which cases justify letting sales staffers in the OR, but most haven't barred the reps completely, as the reps do help doctors work with new technology.
Dive Insight:
Sales reps can conceivably help doctors orient themselves to new medical devices. But if they're there as part of aggressive campaign which pushed the device into the door, and training doctors on the fly during surgery, their presence begins to look a bit more fishy. When sales people, not doctors, do the training on how to use a device, it's more than a risk management concern, it's a dangerous situation. If hospitals aren't doing a good job of training physicians on how to use medical devices, it's critical that the problem be addressed head on. Using sales reps as a crutch is questionable at best.