Tommy Can You Hear Me? I Can Hear Your Wind Blow

Welcome to the camp, I guess you all know why we're here, my name is Tommy, and I became aware this year, if you want to follow me you've got to play pin ball, so put in your ear plugs, put on your eye shades, you know where to put the caulk. Unfortunately fellow bloggers, the Tommy that TSB is writing about is not the Tommy that we know and love, that deaf dumb and blind kid that sure can play a mean pinball. Kudos go out to one of our commentators that has posted the link to the Becker's Orthopedic and Spine Company article on Ortho Direct USA.  If you haven’t read this article or watched the You Tube video with Tommy, you’re missing out on the latest and greatest business model to take the healthcare industry by storm.

“Reducing Selling Cost?  Skyrocketing implant costs?  Driving down the cost of Marketing? Retool Sales People? Taking Back the Operating Room? Virtuous Cycle? Hospitals having difficulty in negotiating better pricing? More reps equal higher implant prices? Redefine the culture in the operating room?  Medicare broke?  Hospital having to figure out how to make profits? Take the salesman out of the equation?  Helping hospitals take back responsibility for managing their implant business? Hospitals taking ownership, versus being a renter of our services? Changing the dynamics of organizational behavior? Seasoned, experienced and tenured individuals standing next to their ORDT candidates?”  How many times have we heard the continuous harangue of these echoes of love directed at sales people in the industry?

Sounds a bit like a Jim Jones and Charlie Manson cocktail, a little social engineering mixed in with a bit of the ole Aztec Two-Step. Tommy, TSB doesn't know if you have been in a hospital lately, or whatever it is that their putting in your tap water, but if you have had the opportunity to visit the OR at your local hospital, there are more barriers and cost controls than ever before.  And before you go any further with that wonderful Fort Wayne marketing spiel about outsourcing your own Orthopedic Device Technicians, or that cookie cutter program that you claim that you don't offer, you need to stop urinating on our shoes and telling us its raining.  It's been raining so long, that we are being deluged out in the field. Where do you get your data that substantiates irresponsible information that sales reps are making more than surgeons?  We haven’t seen any surgeons jumping ship to become salespeople lately, Tommy.  The current climate in the industry is pernicious at best, such that hospital administrators and their staffs view sales reps as an adversary rather than an ally. Tommy…..Tommy……Tommy, can you hear me?  Tommy, so let us get this straight, the hospital is going to contract you so that you can audit their process by recruiting sales people or distributors to turn over their accounts to be part of your so-called revolution.  Black Belts in Six Sigma, why Tommy you may be the next coming of Jack Welch.  In addition, if you're talking about driving up the cost of delivering great products at affordable prices, let's begin with Vendomate, Status Blue, and Rep Trax that suck dollars out of companies, distributors, sales people, and other allied healthcare professionals that attempt to do their jobs on a day to day basis? We actually have to pay to play,  $100 here, $150 there, $400 here, $39 over there and after a while you have a “purdy” good scam hidden behind the guise that all someone is attempt to do is protect the patient. What all the PT Barnums in the industry are attempting to do is take money out of the pockets of hard working sales people who are obviously driving up the cost of healthcare, right Tommy, it’s those God awful salespeople that have caused healthcare to become 25% of the GDP by 2012.


But Tommy, maybe you are the wake up call that many people in this industry need, and that is that salespeople must understand that they have become the enemy within, that it is always easier to pick on the weakest link in the chain, than it is to go after the Big Boys.    So before we end this blog TSB must send one message to his followers and tweeters of spine nation, raise your level of professionalism,  learn as much as you can so you are viewed as an asset rather than a liability, increase your clinical knowledge and commitment, and the Tommy's of the world will become extinct rather than you yourselves.  TSB wants to know what our readers think?


You feel me coming, a new vibration, from afar you'll see me, Tommy's a sensation.