About IMDA

  IMDA is an association of entrepreneurial sales, marketing and distribution organizations that specialize in bringing innovative medical technologies to market. The association raises the awareness of others in the health care community as to the value its members bring them, and helps its members improve their businesses through education and networking opportunities.  Click here to see a list of IMDA member companies.

 What is specialty sales and marketing?

  IMDA members focus on one thing -- bringing truly innovative technologies to health care providers. We can do so quicker and more cost-effectively than manufacturers themselves. How?

• Our members enjoy long-standing relationships with the clinicians in their territories, so that when we take on a product, it will find its way to key decision-makers in days.
• Our salespeople are technically sophisticated, so they aren’t afraid to talk shop with doctors, nurses, department heads and materials managers about the technologies they represent.
• We take care of our manufacturers’ inservicing needs, customer service, and inventory hassles, while working with you to market your product in the most effective way possible.
• We support our manufacturers through aggressive telemarketing campaigns, direct-mail advertising, market research and product exhibits at regional and national medical conventions.
• Simply put, we offer enhanced value to clinical decision-makers – and to our principals.

If you manufacture commodities, call on a general-line distributor or manufacturers rep. But if your product is truly innovative, call an IMDA member.

 History

  1978. It was five years prior to DRGs. Jimmy Carter was president. Jack Nicklaus was named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year. John Belushi starred as Bluto in “Animal House.”

  The owners of a group of 11 medical distributors carrying one manufacturer’s orthopedic products were concerned that the manufacturer was preparing to terminate all of them and go direct.

  Under the leadership of Ron Lawson, owner of Professional Orthopedics Inc., they invited an attorney from Pennsylvania – Mitchell Kramer – to meet with them in Chicago to discuss the situation. An experienced litigator, Kramer had met with success in a number of high-profile antitrust cases, including one against several big manufacturers of gypsum wallboard.

  “Ron walked into my office and told me about the meeting being planned in Chicago,” recalls Kramer, who is IMDA’s legal counsel today. “He said, ‘We have no money; we’re thinking of setting up an association; would you come to Chicago for this meeting -- at your own expense?’ I was intrigued, so I said yes,” says Kramer.

  At the meeting, the distributors agreed to form the Independent Medical Distributors Association (now IMDA).

  IMDA quickly grew beyond its original objective – that is, to stave off terminations by the manufacturer. “It was never meant to be simply self-protective,” says Kramer. “It was intended to be a specialty medical distribution organization.” And the organization quickly grew into just that.

  Frank Bistrom – who, with his wife, Betchie, managed the association from its inception until 2003 – recalls an incident at the very first meeting that hinted at the value members could derive from their new organization.

  “During one of the sessions, somebody at the back of the room said, ‘We charge for deliveries,’” recalls Bistrom. “The whole room went still. Nobody else had been doing that. But that was the whole idea – to talk about how they operated their businesses.” At the next meeting one year later, a member reported he had added thousands of dollars to his bottom line because of that one remark from the back of the room a year before.

  The association took off from there. Kramer spoke at the earliest meetings – as he does today – about how distributors can craft fair and equitable contracts with manufacturers. Members shared ideas on how to improve their businesses. For example, Ron Lawson told his peers that he had hired a sales manager and office manager to take some of the load off him, so he could focus on growing his business. “He convinced [the others] that they had to spend money to make money, and that if they were tying themselves up with paperwork, they were losing their [sales] effectiveness in the field,” says Bistrom.

  Lawson served as IMDA’s first president, followed by Bill Abbott and then Ernie Douglass, owner of Douglass Medical in Raleigh, NC.

  In 1994, IMDA established the Ernie Douglass Award, to recognize a person in the health care industry who exhibits support and encouragement of associates, a willingness to share his or her business and distribution knowledge, and professional salesmanship and ethics in business. The first winner was John Ahern of The Specialties Group, one of IMDA’s charter members. Frank and Betchie Bistrom won the award in 1995, and Lawson himself received it in 1997. Winners since have been Steve Picheny, Stepic Medical (1999); Duke Johns, Medical Specialties (2002); Dave Campbell, Vital/Med Systems (2004); and Bob Wahlenmaier, Products for Surgery (2006).

  IMDA has indeed grown beyond its original mission. For example, manufacturers can now join the association as allied members. In addition, IMDA has a monthly newsletter, a systematic way of alerting members to potential new lines, and a Manufacturers Forum at every Annual Conference.

  But one thing hasn’t changed: IMDA’s commitment to helping its members advance the science and the art of bringing innovative medical technologies to market.

2007-2008 Board of Directors

Staff