>> Okay. My name is Ron [inaudible].
I work in the device industry.
My current position is with market access, healthcare reimbursement, and economics.
My particular company is orthopedics so we make hips and knees and now we're
into some very exciting technologies with biologics, with bone growth factors,
anything that we can develop and invent
to improve a patient's life in terms of their joints.
I am based in a home office in Pittsburgh, and I work across the country.
So I take my experience, my colleague's experiences, a high number of resources
that the corporation has purchased and work with analytics and consulting to assist surgeons,
hospitals, ambulatory care centers, and insurance companies
in bringing those technologies to the market from an economic standpoint.
We've been working on a lot of projects with outpatient ambulatory care centers,
moving total joints, total knees and hips from the inpatient side to the outpatient side.
It's far more economical with the right patients.
Everybody can't possibly be served in that type of a setting,
but that's one of the major projects we're working on.
I'm working with these hospitals and physicians personally to help them with the aspects
of reimbursement, how to code, how to get paid, or I'm working with insurance companies
to explain the technologies so that they're willing to pay for them.
So it really varies a lot.
I also do a lot of teaching in terms of our sales force that does the clinical side.
I help teach them the reimbursement piece.
I also work with new fellows, residents that are graduating so that, you know,
with other clinical background,
they don't necessarily understand how reimbursement works so I assist them as well.