I am excited to share with you one of my favorite people, as our guest blogger: Rob Saron, President of Bovie Medical.
Now, Rob is the kind of person that has no inhibitions. Case in point, his willingness to do anything for the sake of supporting his staff and sales teams.
This is Rob aka ‘The Bovie Leprechaun" at the last HIDA MedSurg conference.
Rob is about as real as they come. He doesn’t realize how many lives he’s touched in our business or what a difference he makes in our lives but he’s the real deal.
Rob is a dear friend and mentor in my life and I’m sure you’ll enjoy following his blogs at Bovie Medical. Following is one of his latest posts, that originally appeared on his blog.
I have been debating how to approach this subject, and after much procrastination, I guess I will just jump in. There are many challenges that medical manufacturing organization leaders face on a daily basis. However, the most frustrating part for me is the regulatory and legal red tape that exists in the process today. While I understand that regulations and legal issues are designed to protect the public (myself included) I often feel that much of what is happening today is not beneficial to the public and in actuality detrimental to our economic well being. The first challenge on every leaders list in the medical manufacturing arena is the Food and Drug Administration and the additional burden of much longer approval times for new products. At different trade shows we casually talk with friends in the industry, and a common topic is the pain felt in dealing with the FDA today. I personally rate the first subject so high on my list that I think number two is actually number three on the list.
Number two is the additional testing and new standards being implemented which drive up the cost of either bringing the product to market or keeping it there. If it actually made a better and safer product because of these tests I couldn’t argue with it, but in 99% of the cases it only makes it more expensive, not better in my opinion. I am reminded of elementary school where we played with mercury and were amazed at all of the tiny balls and how it behaved in your bare hand. Today you would evacuate the school and call in a hazmat team.
Next on the list is a tossup between too many lawyers in the USA that can sue anyone for any reason or none at all and international labor costs which are significantly lower than the good old USA. As an addendum to US labor costs are our health insurance costs for our already higher labor costs. Let’s go with too many lawyers for $100 Alex. The legal system serves a purpose, and I know that, but I still think my best long term deal was over an exclusive agreement made on a handshake. We tried over the years to get something in writing, but our mutual attorneys kept making it impossible to do a deal. That handshake deal lasted until the patent ran out and then we sold the registered trademark to them for half a million and all of it was accomplished with nary an attorney in sight. We have had multiple lawsuits over the past year and about all they have accomplished is wasting money, wasting time, and distracting us from what we need to do to make Bovie Medical a better company. Why don’t the politicians help us with this problem? Oh yes, now I remember, they are 90% attorneys too. Heaven forbid that they might do something that is good for the USA and bad for their brethren in the legal system.
Lastly, unless you make highly protected patented product for a special application and can command a premium from them, then labor costs is a problem. In some countries electrical engineers are a third the cost of what we pay here. If we are speaking of basic labor rates, we pay more per hour for the health insurance to cover these workers that our international competitors pay their workers. We then add our hourly rate on top of it and as you can see, Houston we have a problem. I could probably go on, but this kind of reminds me of a book I once lost on a plane, and was glad I did titled “The Death of Common Sense”. Don’t read the book, it will only depress you.
