An endomechanical product evaluation and selection program by a healthcare resource management group purchasing...

The purpose of this report is to describe an endomechanical product evaluation and selection program in open surgical procedures as well as laparoscopic surgery designed by hospital representatives of Consorta, Inc. (Rolling Meadows, Illinois), a leading healthcare resource management and group purchasing organization, and Auto Suture/United States Surgical, (a division of Tyco Healthcare Group LP, Norwalk, Connecticut). In this evaluation program, twenty-three facilities of the six Consorta shareholder partners hospitals enrolled surgeons to participate in this nonexperimental observational study of the clinical performance of endomechanical products. Performance characteristics of the endomechanical products produced by Auto Suture that were evaluated in 1145 surgical procedures included clinically acceptable ratings, clinically not acceptable ratings, as well as superior ratings in 2988 product evaluations. In this endomechanical product evaluation, the surgeons found that the endomechanical products were clinically acceptable in 97.7% of the evaluations. In these endomechanical products that were judged to be clinically acceptable, the surgeons gave a superior rating to 20% of the products. It is important to emphasize that the clinically acceptable performance of laparoscopic products (98.1%) was very similar to that of endomechanical performance during open surgery (96.9%). Similarly, a superior rating of laparoscopic products that were judged to be clinically acceptable (22%) was comparable to that of the superior rating for endomechanical products that were considered to be clinically acceptable during open surgery (16%). The general surgeons who performed the majority (64.3%) of the product evaluations for the endomechanical products found an extremely high clinical acceptable rating in 98.2% of the evaluations. The obstetricians and gynecologists who performed the next highest number of procedures, 427 (14.3%), had a clinically acceptable rating of 97.0%. The lowest clinically acceptable rating (86.3%) for endomechanical products was reported by orthopedic surgeons who performed only 2.7% of the evaluations.