The COVID-19 coronavirus has put elective and non-essential surgeries on hold for the moment as hospitals place their focus on an increased number of patients and residents across the country are confined to their homes.
Many northeast Indiana communities have businesses centered on the production and distribution of medical devices. One of those companies is Micropulse, which manufactures items such as sterile packaging, orthopedic instruments, cases and trays.
Brian Emerick has been the CEO of Micropulse in Columbia City for the last 32 years. He noted that profits for Micropulse were some of their best ever in the first quarter of 2020; he was also quick to note that those profits were taken in prior to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Emerick says despite changes to the priorities of doctors and facilities during this pandemic, he’s confident Micropulse will make it through. He says producers in Europe are projecting elective surgeries to continue by June, something he’s using as a model for now.
“It’ll take about nine months to totally recover the lost sales of those three months. In addition to normal surgeries over those nine months, they’re expecting increased business," Emerick said. "So a forward-looking company might say, ‘well I can’t cancel orders because then I might be out of stock.’ That’s a bad day when that happens.”
So even if the need for medical devices isn’t active right now, he knows that need will probably explode as soon as surgical procedures resume.
The problem is, we don’t know the endpoint of this pandemic. So even if, long-term, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and recent profits were good… will the company’s bottom line be able to handle a longer pandemic than anticipated?
Emerick says yes.
“We are a contract manufacturer, so companies like Zimmer Biomet, on and on, are our customers. So their business may be off 30, 40 percent, maybe up to 90 percent, but that’s the very short-term for them. So Micropulse continues to manufacture products.”
So for the most part, it’s business-as-usual for Micropulse. Emerick adds because of this, many workers are still essential to its operation, meaning production lines are still active. But, like many other companies, Micropulse has adapted to keep staff .
“We don’t allow outside visitors in the plant, we’re doing social distancing within the plant, any door that can be open is propped so nobody is touching handles, we’ve spread out breakroom tables, we’ve only put four chairs around our big tables, so we’re doing everything we can to keep distance.”
He says that meetings only happen if they absolutely need to, and if so are only limited to “a few people.” Emerick says Micropulse will apply for federal small business aid to help cover any potential losses that may occur in the next few months.
