Less than 50% of coronary stents used in Arkansas are drug-eluting; penetration also low in Montana, Utah & South Dakota, according to Millennium Research Group’s new Procedure Finder analytics tool

September 21, 2009—Waltham, Mass. — Millennium Research Group (MRG) the global authority on medical technology market intelligence, finds that Arkansas has the lowest coronary drug-eluting stent (DES) penetration rate in the US at 49%, followed closely by Montana, Utah, and South Dakota. These numbers contrast the national picture, in which DES represent an overwhelming 70% of coronary stent procedure volumes and, due to their high price premium, 84% of coronary stent revenues.

The penetration of DES at the hospital level depends heavily on hospital profile, according to MRG’s new analytics tool, Procedure Finder: Interventional Cardiology. Urban hospitals, which are more likely to have elevated bed counts, budgets, and patient volumes, are more likely to use premium-priced DES in their coronary stenting procedures. In contrast, rural hospitals with smaller bed counts, tighter budgets, and lower patient volumes are more likely to use bare metal stents (BMS), if they perform coronary stenting procedures at all. Nowhere is this more evident than in Arkansas, where BMS are used in an overwhelming 64% of cases performed in rural hospitals (compared to 35% nationally).

“There are only five rural facilities performing coronary stenting procedures in Arkansas and the busiest of those—White River Medical Center in Batesville—uses BMS almost exclusively,” says Aaron Dickson, Co-President of MRG. “Similarly, the state’s largest stenting facility—the Arkansas Heart Hospital in Little Rock—performs nearly 4,000 stenting procedures annually and is using DES in less than 20% of them.  The relatively low urbanization of the state is likely affecting even those facilities located in urban areas, leading to low overall DES penetration in the state compared to more densely populated regions. "

About Procedure Finder
Procedure Finder is Millennium Research Group’s new facility level procedural forecasting tool. This database allows health care sales and marketing managers to identify and analyze all hospitals that are performing specific procedures of interest. Procedure Finder provides data points such as:

Procedure volume forecasts by setting (inpatient vs. outpatient)
Procedure volume forecasts by payer type (Medicare, Medicaid, private, and uninsured)
Hospital demographics, including total revenue, discharges, patient days, bed count, and catchment area

Using this data, companies can:

Align sales and marketing activities around areas with the most potential
Gauge sales force effectiveness
Benchmark performance in different regions
Better define sales territories to maximize share in high-profit areas Identify regional variances in health care provision
Forecast relevant device and procedure markets through 2013