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Since it was founded in 2004, the surgeon-owned distributorship, Inland Spine Products, has been so successful in reducing implant costs for local hospitals that last year it formed a consulting firm, Alliance Surgical Distributors, to help other like-minded physicians set up similar partnerships. Today, surgeons at 7 hospital systems in California, Colorado and New Mexico have started their own implant distributorships, selling implants for joint replacement and spine surgeries to other facilities for less than a traditional medical device distributor. At a time when surgical facilities are struggling to find ways of keeping pricey implant cases profitable, could these doctor-owned distributorships catch on?
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