Boston Scientific To Significantly Cut Salaries Of CEO, Directors

(RTTNews) - Boston Scientific Corp. said Thursday that to lessen the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on its business, it will significantly reduce the salaries of its chief executive officer, directors and executive committee members.

The company also intends to temporarily reduce work week schedules for employees, where appropriate.

The medical device maker said these measures are to reduce costs, as it assumes the second-quarter impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will be more significant than the first quarter.

Boston Scientific has put in place other precautionary measures including rotational shifts, segregating buildings, and limiting movement across building sites.

The company noted that as the COVID-19 reached a global pandemic level in March, procedural volumes significantly declined. Emergent procedures were prioritized to help enable increased hospital capacity, while elective procedures were delayed.

Boston Scientific expects this delay in elective procedures to hurt its short-term performance. As a result, the company now expects its first-quarter 2020 revenue growth on a reported basis to be approximately flat to up slightly versus the prior-year period, and organic revenue to decrease about 2 percent to 3 percent.

To address the urgent demand for personal protective equipment or PPE and ventilators, Boston Scientific is working with the University of Minnesota Bakken Medical Device Center and industry collaborators to bring a ventilator alternative to market.

The machine is intended to work as a one-armed robot to pump an Ambu bag, thus replacing the need for manual respiration in emergency settings.

In addition, Boston Scientific has teamed up with a global manufacturer of commercial ventilators to produce product components and enable increased production of transportable ventilators.

To resolve the issue of PPE shortages among healthcare workers, the company is making face shields at three of its U.S. manufacturing sites through a collaboration with the nonprofit "GetUsPPE.org" and plastic packaging company Prent Corporation.

Further, Boston Scientific is working with the University of Minnesota and others to develop a reusable personal respirator.

The joint team intends to design and build prototypes and distribute a significant quantity of reusable PPE that can be used in place of the combination N95 respirator and face shield.