Business Spotlight: Nixa company offers surgical specialty products

Ken Anderson, president of Tech Medical Services Inc., has just returned from Bolivar where he visited with Dr. Bryan Treacy of the OB/GYN Wom-en's Health Center.

Earlier in the day, Treacy used a Hydro ThermAblator, which is sold by Tech Medical Ser-vices, to perform an endo-metrial ablation on a patient who suffers from abnormal uterine bleeding. The procedure, which destroys the lining of the uterus, was successful and therefore allowed the patient to avoid a hysterectomy.

The Hydro ThermAblator, which only recently received approval from the Food and Drug Administration, is one of many innovative surgical specialty products sold by Tech Medical Services in Nixa.

Anderson, who has more than 23 years in the medical specialty supply business, founded Tech Medical Services in 1989 shortly after he relocated to the Springfield area.

Initially, the company carried a single line of products and employed two full-time salespeople.

Over the years, however, the company has added both salespeople and product lines. Today, there are 11 full-time salespeople marketing surgical specialty products ranging from pediatric heart valves to arteriovenous access grafts to surgery professionals and hospitals in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Ne-braska, Arkansas, Illinois, Okla-homa and Texas.

"Most of our salespeople have a clinical background and are highly trained," Anderson said. "We do more than sell surgical specialty products. We also provide our clients with clinical documentation, perform clinical evaluations and train surgical personnel to use the products we sell."

Some client services are provided through a second company that Anderson started last year called Gel Tech Services. For a flat fee, Gel Tech Services will provide a hospital with the equipment and staff needed to conduct a particular procedure. According to Anderson, outsourcing certain medical procedures helps the hospital save money by reducing expenditures for equipment and medical personnel training.

Tech Medical Services also works with many hospitals to help them find ways to save money.

For example, the company develops prepackaged surgical kits that help hospitals better manage and control their inventory.

The laproscopic accessory kit, for example, contains a variety of surgical products which may be used during the actual procedure. If a surgically sealed item in the kit isn't used, it can be returned to Tech Medical Services, and the hospital receives a refund for the cost of that item.

The company also assists hospitals in saving money on inventory by providing them with specialty surgical supplies on demand. Once an order is received, Tech Medical Services will ship the item out via air freight, and the typical turnaround time is less than 24 hours.

"One of the biggest challenges we face is keeping up with new surgical devices that are coming out," Anderson said. "I'm constantly following the progress of new surgical de-vices to see if they've received FDA approval, and their method of marketing and distribution."

"The other challenges involve marketing these products," he added. "A lot of these companies have spent vast amounts on (research and development) and in many cases can't afford to hire their own direct sales staff, so they hire us to market and distribute the product. We ne-gotiate a contract that makes Tech Medical Services their exclusive distributor for three years. If we do a great job of marketing their products and now provide them with the cash flow, in many instances they will not renew their agreement, and they'll hire their own sales staff because they can afford to do that."

Anderson currently is tracking a variety of niche surgical specialty products that, if approved by the FDA, would be used by OB/GYN physicians, cardiovascular surgeons and surgical professionals during minor, noninvasive surgeries. According to Anderson, keeping on top of the latest technologies in surgical specialty products will help Tech Medical Services continue its current growth pattern, which will in-crease the company's sales by 20 percent this year.