2006 Japan pricing cuts
This article was originally published in The Gray Sheet
Executive Summary
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare's most recent round of biannual reimbursement cuts under its unloved foreign average pricing (FAP) system, implemented April 1, poses varying levels of impact on industry, with implantable cardioverter defibrillators, percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty catheters, and bare-metal and drug-eluting stents escaping unscathed, while some pacemakers sustained cuts greater than 10%. Stryker CFO Dean Bergy estimates that rates in the orthopedic implant sector, overall, have been slashed about 5%-6%. AdvaMed has made it a priority during the next several years to revamp Japan's FAP system (1"The Gray Sheet" Oct. 3, 2005, p. 5)...