This article is part of our Ask the CMO series, where Cook Medical’s chief medical officer, Dr. John Kaufman, answers questions. Learn more about Dr. Kaufman in his Meet Our Leaders bio.
Q: You have worked with many other medical device companies and many people in the industry, such as sales reps, trainers, product managers, and regulatory scientists. From a physician’s perspective, how did Cook differentiate itself?
Dr. Kaufman: The reason that I was so excited to join Cook is that for my entire career I always felt that anyone that I worked with from Cook is more of a partner with aligned interests toward doing the best thing for the patient than a transactional relationship. I’ve never felt with Cook that there was a pressure to use something that somebody needed to fill a quota for or convince me to switch to something. It was never that way. It is always with Cook that I felt aligned, to the extent that I could trust anyone from Cook to say, “We don’t have the thing you are looking for, but this other company does.” When I first then began investigating or meeting people as potentially becoming part of Cook that culture was very clear.
What is different about Cook is that, although that culture may be present at other companies, it is such a strong presence throughout all of Cook. There is a shared alignment of goals between those of us who are taking care of people and trying to do the best thing for the person in front of us regardless of other factors. Overall, that is how Cook operates.
Obviously, we are a company, we have to somehow make enough money to stay afloat and make enough money to take care of the people who work for us as well. So, decisions can’t always be purely altruistic. We do have to make some of those decisions, but that is always in the framework of is this really the right thing to do, not just for us but for the patients of physicians.
What is an area that could potentially be improved on?
What could we do better? I think everyone has a different answer based on their own perspective, and as Cook customer it would be great if we could get new or updated devices through the pipeline and into clinical practice as fast as possible. We have so much fantastic stuff in the wings and I want it now! On a serious note, we also need to focus on preserving our unique culture and relationships with physicians as we navigate the complex and highly regulated world that we now operate in. These two things have been drivers for Cook from the beginning and are in a sense timeless.