Medtech's Year-End Sales Strategy Needs a Rethink ft Deloitte's Brad Maruca

Every year, the Medtech industry follows a familiar pattern. As the calendar winds down, manufacturers work to hit annual sales targets by offering hospitals and health systems incentives to purchase inventory before year-end. On paper, the strategy makes sense. Sales numbers improve, purchasing targets are met, and everyone enters January having closed the year strong.

But according to Brad Maruca, Managing Director in Deloitte's MedTech Division, that approach may be creating a much larger problem.

"The real gap isn't market access," Brad explains. "It's patient acceptance."

His point is simple but powerful. Many patients delay procedures at the beginning of the year because insurance deductibles reset on January 1. While manufacturers successfully move inventory in December, hospitals often end up with products sitting on shelves as procedure volumes decline during the first quarter.

The result is a cycle that repeats year after year. Companies discount products to drive purchases, inventory builds up, procedure demand slows, and commercial teams spend months trying to recover.

​Brad proposes a thought experiment. Instead of using commercial dollars to discount devices at the end of the year, what if manufacturers invested those same resources in reducing financial barriers for patients? Rather than encouraging hospitals to stock more inventory, those investments could help qualified patients move forward with procedures they have already been recommended to receive.

As he puts it:
"Let's take that 10% discount dollarized and use that to offset the patient's out-of-pocket..."

The facility still receives payment. The manufacturer sells the device at full price. Most importantly, patients receive care when it's clinically recommended instead of postponing treatment because of financial barriers.
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Brad's perspective also raises a broader question about how commercialization strategies are developed. If manufacturers already know that procedure demand fluctuates based on patient insurance cycles, shouldn't that information shape planning across the business?

Commercial teams, operations, manufacturing partners, and supply chains could all benefit from forecasting around actual patient behavior rather than reacting to year-end purchasing patterns.

Instead of rushing expedited orders, managing excess inventory, or trying to recover from predictable slowdowns, organizations could make more informed decisions months in advance.

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