20 years!  This year AMDR is celebrating 20 years of advancing our mission to protect the interests of the commercial medical device reprocessing and remanufacturing industry and to promote reprocessing and remanufacturing as a healthcare strategy that increases quality, reduces costs and improves patient care.  I’m proud of the work we’ve done and excited about the work we will do.

This last month AMDR conducted its annual Board meeting.  As usual, we evaluated industry priorities and set objectives for the year ahead – but in celebration of our 20 years, we invited other companies to join our table.  This year, I’m proud to have already welcomed Cardinal Health to AMDR’s membership roster and next year, we hope to announce the addition of several more exciting companies  – demonstrating a growing, diverse and international industry.

The last 20 years have largely focused on legitimizing reprocessing by promoting proper regulation, promoting the benefits to healthcare providers, and impacting healthcare economies by increasing competition, reducing costs and waste – and helping to bend the cost curve.  Reprocessing works.  Nearly all of America’s Best hospitals and all the leading academic medical centers in Germany reprocess with an AMDR member company.  We save hospitals hundreds of millions of dollars a year and bring competitive market pressure that forces big device companies to lower their prices to compete.  This is good news for healthcare providers and patients.   

Going forward, AMDR will focus its work to better align the larger medical device industry with the fundamental interests of hospitals and healthcare providers by making single-use device reprocessing and remanufacturing a key supply chain strategy.  In making medical device purchasing decisions, we want healthcare providers to think of reprocessing first.  Reprocessors are aligned with healthcare providers interests in maximizing the value of medical device assets – not maximizing consumption of costly and wasteful disposable products.   AMDR also encourages medical device makers to also think of reprocessing first.  By working together, device companies and reprocessors can expand access to new and more advanced medical treatments and at the same time reduce costs and waste.   

Everyone knows that healthcare costs are out of control.  We’ve spent the last 20 years doing our part to combat this trend.  We hope, in the next 20 years, to help healthcare adopt a healthier, more transparent medical device usage paradigm – looking at the total lifecycle of medical device assets – so that healthcare providers can deliver cutting-edge treatments, but better control and optimize the value of medical technology.

Thanks for reading!  We’ve had a busy quarter and hope you’ll read more about it in the stories below!  Happy holidays from AMDR!

Thanks,

Dan Vukelich, CAE, Esq.
President & CEO
Association of Medical Device Reprocessors
www.amdr.org