Wall Street Asks J and J CEO About Recalls and As A Bonus Question, When He Plans to Step Down on Conference Call

It doesn’t get much more upfront than this with one mentioning their feelings on how the company is being run does it. The one quote below is interesting too in the fact that “everything is under control”? How come we have more recalls coming up all the time? As soon as one fire is put out, it seems like one more ignites.

“Weldon: I don’t think if we always talk about lots of different issues out there, and we can’t go into a lot of them. But no, I think we’ve identified and understand what the issues are. We’re addressing the issues, and we’re going to put them behind us. I think we’ve got them a, under control; b, understand them; and c, we’re addressing them.”

In the knee and hip business, is the answer to just buy another company?

Johnson and Johnson Set to Make Another Offer To Smith & Nephew-Going After One More Orthopedic Acquisition in the UK Meanwhile Consumer Confidence Is Limited

If you are a frequent reader then you will have seen several articles about being able to scan for recalls with a cell phone, aka the “Bar Code Campaign” so at least when errors are made, consumers, doctors and others all have the ability to quickly identify what products not to use. This is a BP Oil tactic and we have seen what happens when a plan is not in place and this looks to be a big bunch of oil bubbling out with no plan for action when disaster hits. People are very forgiving in nature, but gee if you do not show a level of confidence that when all hell breaks loose that you have a plan, that feeling of forgiving will leave you cold.

Counterfeit Johnson & Johnson OneTouch Products Investigation – One More Good Reason to Start “Tagging” Products for Consumers So We Can Scan for Authenticity

Here we go again, a missed opportunity for consumer and patient safety. I wrote to the FDA one more time so maybe I may have an open ear? Johnson and Johnson certainly is the poster child with the 3 elements that need to be covered from over the counter products, to pharmaceuticals to medical devices with using bar codes to allow anyone to use their smartphone as a scanner to find instant recall and safety information and the FDA would benefit with a simple format of compliance with running a report to check on a synchronized data base of bar codes so in addition to information on the web site, the FDA would instant information on safety and recall compliance. Other companies should certainly take notice too and someone start a pilot program to do something for the consumer this time.

Not necessarily with knee and hip implants, but there have been cases to where recalled devices have missed being pulled from inventory and people have died as they were used in mostly heart and interventional heart surgeries, so again before surgery we could “scan that stent”. The It folks at hospitals like the idea and here’s a couple sample tweets from not too long ago.

Again, Johnson and Johnson with all their products in so many different areas of healthcare could sure stand to build consumer, doctor and business confidence about now and it sure beats being the BP of the pharmaceutical and medical devices industry.

This suggestion has been out there for over a year and not only for J and J the big poster child but for the FDA and other drug and device companies as well, but nobody wants to invest and the second thought I have along these lines is that there are still a lot of luddites out there still looking for some great white hope? Duh? I don’t think that will happen anytime soon and the public as well as Wall Street can see right through it with CEOs out of touch and usually lacking any level of participation themselves with much technology.

You have to be a participant today and the old times of “staff” doing everything for you have clearly vanished as it seems everyone is brought to task today in about 30 seconds. BD

Johnson & Johnson’s Q4 2010 earnings gave a sobering picture of how much money the company has lost in sales from the ongoing Tylenol recalls, which have fallen almost exactly inside J&J’s fiscal year: $1.3 billion. Sales of J&J’s U.S. consumer products division were down 19.3 percent for the entire year, to $5.5 billion.

More wounding for CEO Bill Weldon, on his conference call with Wall Street analysts yesterday he was asked by Leerink Swann’s Frederick Wise when the recalls would finally be over. After Weldon answered, Wise immediately asked when he was stepping down as CEO.

Ouch! Some kind of coded message perhaps? Or just confusion over the fact that Weldon canned his planned successor — worldwide chairman Colleen Goggins — when he blamed her for the Tylenol crisis at J&J’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit?