Medical-Surgical and Clinical Laboratory product segments continued to show growth during the fourth quarter of 2016, with the Clin-Lab segment growing 12.4 percent year over year to $2.15 billion, according to a new report from GHX Market Intelligence. The segment grew 3.9 percent from the previous quarter.
The Med-Surg segment grew five percent from the fourth quarter of 2015 and 3.1 percent over the third quarter of 2016, increasing to $9.6 billion in volume.
The report is based on data from the top 20 U.S. healthcare distributors, representing approximately 75 percent of all distributed healthcare sales in the United States. This represents more than $45 billion invoice dollars and more than 100 million invoice lines of annual distributed sales for Med-Surg and Clin-Lab products and supplies.
In the Med-Surg segment, parenteral was again the largest major segment at $771 million, representing 8.1 percent of total Med-Surg. The largest segment in terms of growth was Treatment Centers, growing 12.7 percent in 2016 -- from $371 million in the third quarter to $413 million in the fourth.
The hospital segment experienced a quarter-over-quarter increase of 2.8 percent, growing from $6.1 billion in the third quarter to $6.3 billion in the fourth; while Alternate Sites turned in 5.9 percent growth in 2016, a 10.4 percent growth from 2014 to 2016.
In the Clin-Lab segment, Point-of-Care Testing Reagents/Supplies was by far the largest major segment, with $1.18 billion, or 54.5 percent of total Clin-Lab. Home Healthcare was the largest growth segment at 20.9 percent in 2016, and the largest contributor at $950.1 million, or 44.1 percent of the total Clin-Lab volume. Hospital was the second largest contributor in volume at $612.2 million, or 28.4 percent of the total.
The findings, the report said, provide further evidence that healthcare "continues to respond to changing market conditions and financial pressures, resulting in the move to provide care outside the traditional brick-and-mortar hospital setting."
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