Introduced in the House Monday, Senate Bill 110 was sent to the House Rules Committee. Sponsoring Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, expected the measure to pass the full House as easily as it earned 24-2 Senate approval last Friday.
"It should be assigned to a committee by tomorrow and will pass the House very handily, probably early next week," Buttars said, noting the only real opposition has come from out-of-state lobbyists representing the medical device reprocessing industry.
Buttars, and Majority Whip Stephen Urquhart, R-St. George, are pushing SB110 on behalf of South Jordan's Merit Medical Systems Inc., a provider of disposable sensors, catheters, syringes, needles and other cardiological and radiological gear.
Fred Lampropoulos, Merit's chief executive and former Republican gubernatorial candidate, has testified that his company is left open to liability issues when the reprocessing industry recycles one-use products at discounts of a third to half cost of new products.
Lampropoulos and SB110 backers stress the legislation would not stop Utah hospitals from buying or using reprocessed devices. However, it would protect Merit from liability lawsuits based on unauthorized reuse of devices the company clearly marks as only single use.
"It seems very clear to us that liability should be on reprocessors' shoulders, and not Merit Medical," Buttars said.
An estimated 7,600 Utahns are employed in the medical products industry, with Merit alone providing an annual payroll of $274 million. The company plans to spend more than $25 million on new facilities that would create another 200-500 jobs.
The reprocessing industry, SB110 sponsors say, does not employ any Utahns. That does not mean the bill has not faced determined opposition in the halls of the Capitol.
The Association of Medical Device Reprocessors claims its industry got its start 20 years ago, when some manufacturers changed labels on some products from "reusable" to "single use" without any apparent structural differences in the devices. Today, AMDR estimates, tens of millions of such devices have been reprocessed and reused with few problems arising.
One major reprocessor, Phoenix-based Alliance Medical Corp., says its industry's attention to sterilization and pre-use testing of recycled devices is second to none. Alliance spokesman Don Selvey recently told lawmakers his own company had reprocessed millions of devices without being sued over product failure.
bmims@sltrib.com
