How important do you feel it is for a supplier to hire certified practitioners or technicians?

We’ve had certified orthotists from time to time. It’s more common for us to have physical therapists and nurses. We do hire clinically whenever we can. The knowledge is invaluable, and the clients really appreciate it. All of the certified orthotists, occupational therapists, and physical therapists are more current in splinting and bracing. 

Being certified helps [sales reps] if they’re going to market to an orthotist. There’s a camaraderie there. But a therapist is highly qualified to sell our braces. We’re not a manufacturer doing billing, so we’re not in competition with them. 

If we hear through word of mouth that someone [certified] is interested in selling, [then we might approach them.] Then we screen whoever applies. 

For product development, since that’s clinically based, all of our people are certified orthotists.
Connie Wassermann
Product Manager
Restorative Care of America Inc.St., Petersburg, Fla.

We don’t have a reason to hire practitioners [in the central office], because we don’t see patients. We would hire practitioners if we wanted to get into componentry. Then we would need their expertise to develop and design new products. But right now, we’re tied in with amputees around the country, and we take their input and use that.

I spent fifteen years as an orthopedic surgeon, and that’s where most of our business is—in sports medicine. But we are getting more into O&P, and we have hired a couple of practitioners as reps in the field. We need their experience to go to the brace shops and talk to the practitioners there.
Leland Duyck
Director of Sales and Marketing
New Options Sports, Dallas, Texas

The only CPs we have on staff are the CEO and myself. We’re both CPs with significant “O” experience, though. At Knit-Rite we develop textiles, so we also employ a textile expert. He handles testing and product development, as well as the engineering of new products.

As a certified practitioner, I’m able to bridge the gap between the practitioners we sell to and our employees. I try to get them to understand what our clients want and make sure they’re properly equipped. Our staff is trained to answer questions and help customers, but they aren’t certified. More complicated questions are referred to the CEO or me.
Doyle Collier, CP
Director of Technical Education, Knit-Rite
Kansas City, Kan.

Our director of clinical development is a CP and an amputee. We also have certified staff in our research and development departments who are CPs and amputees. Since we only manufacture prostheses, it’s not necessary to have any COs on staff.

We value the collaborative process between engineers and certified prosthetists; we need the engineering minds as well as the certified minds.
Meghan Eilbec
Marketing Manager, Freedom Innovations Inc.
Irvine, Calif.

Aetrex has over 20 certified pedorthists and one certified orthotist on staff in various roles throughout the company. We believe it’s essential [to have practitioners] in every aspect of our business, from research and development, manufacturing and distribution, through education and customer service and finally with marketing and sales.
Josie Genovese
Director, Orthotics & Prosthetics, Aetrex Worldwide Inc.
Teaneck, N.J.

We pay several CPOs a monthly stipend to be consultants and ask them to do evaluations of products or submit new product ideas. Then, once we’ve developed a new product, we’ll send it to them for feedback. About twice a year, we’ll bring them here for a brainstorming session. I travel around and meet with them individually as well.

We used to have a CP on staff, but it’s hard to get practitioners to leave their practices. Practitioners may feel that they want to step outside the walls of patient care and enter the manufacturing world, but they often find it is not what they expected.

So we’ve found the consulting system works better for us. If we had one person on staff, he or she would be biased toward one way of doing things. With this group, we get a multitude of opinions. We can feel sure that any new product we develop is going to work in the Southeast as well as it does on the West Coast. Practitioners usually consider being asked to consult an accolade.

Since we’re a prosthetic manufacturer, we try to have CPs as consultants. They know what’s out there and what’s not out there, what works and what doesn’t. They can say “We need a suspension sleeve for this that’s at 6 mm thickness, and right now there’s just one at 3 mm thickness.”
Brigg Ett Jordan
Director of Sales, Silipos
New York, N.Y.

Currently, we have two COs on staff. We do lots of custom fabrication. A fabrication manager may be great at knowing how to make a brace, but if he’s on the phone with an orthotist who is using a lot of technical terms and talking about specific clinical indications, then he may not know what to do in terms of the patient’s need. An orthotist knows more than how to make one particular brace.

So we try to have our orthotists be accessible for conversations, and make sure they’re only focusing on the critical aspects of production—being actively involved in modifying casts and adjusting hinges. We have our fabrication managers do most of the supervising.

We could hire certified technicians as fabrication managers, but we haven’t because part of our effort here is promoting within. We’ve really tried to create a learning environment.

An orthotist who chooses to work in a fabrication environment needs to have good mechanical aptitude and the ability to see through the eyes of the orthotist on the phone. We do more with digital pictures now, but it takes some very specific communication. And some COs miss the patient contact.
Rick Riley, CEO
Townsend Design
Bakersfield, Calif.

Being a relatively small, custom-fab company, we’re kind of a different style of company. We have two owners: one is a CPO and owns a patient care facility, one is a registered technician. We have no need for other full-time CPOs on staff. I feel having a CPO on staff puts our customers at ease, knowing they can speak with a certified staff member if need be. We’re not just some technicians working in a garage.

It’s rare that we need to refer questions to a certified staff member. It’s happened maybe 20 times in our company’s history. It usually only happens when we get a custom fab request we wouldn’t be comfortable doing. 

When you look at the larger [custom fab organizations], they have huge clinical staffs. The smaller ones don’t always. 

I can imagine with growth we’d have a need for more certified staff. It’s all based on the size of your organization. Any time you have plaster cast modification done, it should be done by a trained clinician. Technicians can do it with proper training, but don’t have the extensive background of a clinician.
Greg Mattson, RTPO
Owner, Fabtech Systems
Mukilteo, Wash.

Right now I have no certified technicians or CPOs on staff. I’m not certified myself, but I’ve been in the business since 1979. I would hire someone certified, but to be honest it’s hard to find people. That’s not to say that I don’t consider CPs or CPOs for employment, it’s just a very common problem finding them. When it comes to fabrication, [certification] is really not needed. On-the-job training is more important.

I hire technicians with a minimum of five years’ experience in the field. I haven’t seen anything that makes someone certified better than someone who’s not. What we find is that if a technician has worked in a “mom and pop” facility, he just needs to be trained on all of the things we do that a “mom and pop” doesn’t. For example, we do fabrication for companies all over the country. 

A lot of my competitors only hire certified technicians, but I don’t see the advantage. If someone certified with one year of experience builds a brace, and someone not certified with five years of experience builds a brace, I’m still going to choose the one with more experience, even though he’s not certified.
Ed Grace
President, Grace Prosthetic Fabrication Inc.
New Port Richey, Fla.