Military Orders Inundate Medical Supply Company
Robert Hovee once said that his medical equipment company thrives on emergencies. But the president of Life Support Systems Inc. may never have imagined an emergency like the Persian Gulf War.
In early December, as U.S. troops poured into the Middle East, the Irvine firm got a call from the Assn. of Military Surgeons, a group representing military medical staff and suppliers of medical and pharmaceutical products.
The group asked Hovee’s company to prepare to meet an unspecified number of orders from the Defense Personnel Support Center, the Pentagon’s medical supply depot in Philadelphia.
“At that time, I didn’t think it was going to be large orders, and I was sure we’d have no problem meeting (the Pentagon’s) orders as well as those from our commercial clients,” Hovee said Tuesday.
Within a week after that December phone call, however, the orders from the Pentagon started flooding in.
In the past month, Life Support received government orders for $350,000 worth of emergency medical equipment, ranging from compact devices to regulate oxygen discharge to patients, to medicated towel dressings for burn victims. Those sales are roughly equal to the Irvine firm’s military sales for all of 1990. The company had overall sales of about $10 million.
“Frankly, we’re scrambling,” Hovee said. “. . . We’ve been working on overtime for the last three weeks and we’ve increased our work force by 25%” to about 90 employees.
“The purchase is part of the military’s plan to improve medical services to our military personnel in the gulf,” Hovee said, adding that the company is delaying shipments to some commercial customers to fill the Pentagon’s orders.
And as company employees have followed developments in the war, their work has taken on a new sense of urgency and importance. “Since some of our people have friends and relatives fighting out there, their work has become more dedicated and intense lately,” Hovee said.
Previously, the company’s clients have included the sultan of Brunei, the U.S. Secret Service and the British Royal Family, Hovee said.
Anthony Gambino, the company’s marketing director, said the Pentagon has ordered equipment through the end of February.
Among the products that Life Support is sending to the Pentagon are:
* AutoVent 2000: A compact, lightweight, field device that lets patients breathe oxygen on demand;
* LSP Oxygen Pressure Regulator: A small valve that regulates oxygen pressure and flow to patients;
* LSP Minilator and Multilator: Another type of portable oxygen regulator that enables up to 17 patients to use a single oxygen tank.
* Miller Full-Body Splint/Litter: A narrow plastic stretcher that keeps an injured person’s spine immobile and, at sea, is used as a flotation device;
* LSP Trauma/Burn Towel Dressings: Medicated dressings for treating burns, abrasions and skin irritation.
In recent months, Life Support had also sold large quantities of similar products to the governments of Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey, apparently in anticipation of the Gulf War, Hovee said.
“We’re just glad to be of service to our (troops) out there in the desert,” Hovee said. “If this improves our profits, that’s a bonus.”
