Stryker Company Profile >Change the World > # 50

Stryker

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Sometimes terrible errors happen in medicine—a patient gets surgery on the wrong body part, or stitched up with a foreign object still inside them (an estimated 4,500 to 6,000 times a year in the U.S. alone). Other times, mundane accidents lead to fatal results. Stryker, the medical-device maker, partners with hospitals to prevent such “never events” and make the patient experience safer. Its $6.4 billion medical and surgical divisions sell products like the SurgiCount Safety-Sponge System (to ensure no sponges are left behind in a patient’s body), ProCuity beds (to protect against falls, a million-time-per-year accident), and repositioning products designed to prevent pressure injuries, which affect more than 2.5 million patients a year, and can lead to infection and death. To encourage proper training and better outcomes, Stryker makes risk-sharing agreements, offering customers reimbursements if they don’t see a reduction in such events. Leah Binder, president and CEO of the Leapfrog Group, which advocates for patient safety, applauds Stryker’s competitive focus and innovation in the field. “It’s extremely exciting,” she says, noting that the problems the company is addressing are both very serious and typically overlooked.