How Can Companies Overcome The Medical Device Tax With Technology?
Clearly, the medical device industry was hit hard in 2012. More than 7,000 people were laid off. No wonder an article on the MassDevice website calls it ?the year of the layoff.?
Some of the medical device industry?s biggest companies announced significant workforce reductions in 2012, often in attempts to cut costs ahead of the medical device tax, which went into effect this year.
Medical device company Stryker, for example, planned to reduce its workforce by 5 percent throughout last year due to an anticipated $150 million in medical device tax compliance costs. According to a recent roundup article of industry layoffs on the MassDevice website, the impending tax also played a role in Hill-Rom Holdings? decision to lay off 200 workers, which amounts to 3 percent of its workforce.
Yet others, such as Covidien and St. Jude Medical, downplayed the role the tax played in their job cuts and outsourcing. John Heinmiller, a vice president at St. Jude Medical, described the medical device tax as just one of many financial pressures facing the business.