Lost in all of the noise about the constitutionality of the individual mandate, insurance exchanges without suppliers, websites that don’t work and canceled policies that don’t comply is a much more encouraging and lasting impact of the Affordable Care Act: accelerating the outcomes-focused orientation with medtech vendors as the unintended beneficiaries. 

Forward-thinking medtech companies can start better positioning themselves now to transition from serving as suppliers to becoming partners with their hospital customers, working together to ensure favorable outcomes for patients and profitable growth for both parties. It doesn’t have to continue to be a zero-sum game in which hospitals improve their costs by attacking manufacturers’ margins. In the new world, where poor clinical outcomes hurt a hospital’s bottom line, hospitals are laser-focused on quality and performance, and medtech can play a critical role.

But they’ll have to persuade the skeptics: This ZS survey found that many hospital executives aren’t yet convinced that medtech can help address their biggest priorities, so the industry needs to boost hospital executives’ confidence that medtech manufacturers can function as more than suppliers.