Corporate Responsibility
At Orthofix we believe that all stakeholders must be considered in our actions every day.
We are committed to embedding sustainability throughout our business with a mindset that is focused on providing superior solutions to physicians worldwide to improve the lives of patients. At the same time, we never lose sight of growing our businesses, developing our people, and enhancing our communities. These values reflect the five tenets of our Corporate Responsibility strategy: Our People; Community Involvement; Environmental Responsibility; Governance; and Safety and Quality. To learn more about our Corporate Responsibility program, please download our Corporate Responsibility Factsheet.
Our People
Our future is driven by dedicated employees around the world who are committed to innovation and improving outcomes for patients. We strive to support our teams in the areas of development, mentoring, engagement, and health and wellness, enabling them to do their best work as they grow their careers.
Orthofix values and is committed to fostering, cultivating and preserving a culture that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion. We demonstrate our commitment to providing equal and equitable opportunities to all employees through programs such as our Moving 4ward initiative, a program created to embrace the value of diversity and reflect the communities where we live and work. We embrace and encourage our employees’ differences and know that diversity, equity and inclusion help build a high-performing and competitive company.
Additionally, Orthofix proudly supports the Orthofix Women’s Network, a program that provides opportunities for women to learn from each other and grow within our company and our industry.
Throughout the year, Orthofix promotes a variety of diverse voices to our employees by recognizing events such as Black History Month, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Women’s History Month, Juneteenth, and Hispanic Heritage Month.
Community Involvement
At Orthofix, we don’t just make a difference in the lives of patients and their families. We strive to directly impact our communities around the world through employee volunteer programs, charitable contributions, and meaningful partnerships. We support a variety of charitable organizations through donations, fundraising efforts, educational partnerships with colleges and universities, and local community development. Over the years, we have raised funds and awareness for veteran support groups, food and homebuilding organizations, and health-related institutions and organizations such as the Scottish Rite Hospital for Children, Red Cross, Trusted World, Carter BloodCare, Toys for Tots, Pedal for the Cause, Ronald McDonald House Charities of San Diego, Veterans Coalition of North Central Texas and Soldiers’ Angels.
Orthofix also conducts an annual month-long awareness and fundraising campaign with our employees and business partners to benefit Donate Life America, a nonprofit organization that promotes the importance of organ, eye, and tissue donation.
Additionally, we have an ongoing engineering partnership with the University of Texas at Dallas, enabling students to work on real-life healthcare solutions as we invest in the next generation of engineers and business leaders.
In 2022, our employees contributed more than 1,900 hours in support of our community service projects. We positively impacted our communities and had a terrific time together while making a difference in countless lives.
At Orthofix, we are proud of our employees and their generosity. Our commitment to community support is aligned with applicable local laws and regulations and with the medical technology industries’ ethical standards.
Funding decisions are based on the principles of transparency, documentation, and segregation of duties and donations to health care-related organizations fall under the responsibility of the Orthofix Grants Committee, which is composed of non-sales company functions. For information on the application process, please email Grants@Orthofix.com.
Environmental Responsibility
From an active corporate office waste recycling program to developing environmentally responsible medical instruments and packaging, Orthofix is working to continually reduce its environmental impact.
We embed the principles of advancing a circular economy into our practices globally through our facility and manufacturing initiatives that include an in-office recycling program including recycle/reuse practices and a commitment to eliminate Styrofoam. Additionally, our facilities have energy efficient HVAC systems, 100-percent sustainable energy in certain locations, and our California offices also include electric vehicle charging stations to promote environmentally friendly behaviors among employees.
We are committed to transitioning to lower carbon operations. We have begun to explore a decrease in our carbon footprint for the manufacturing and supply of our surgical instruments via single-use sterile packed instruments. In 2020, we launched a partnership with Neo Medical to distribute single-use sterile packed instrumentation for certain spine surgeries and develop single-use solutions for other procedures. These single-use sterile packed instruments eliminate the high carbon cost of repeated shipping and sterilization, cutting the carbon footprint and improving the spinal surgery ecosystem with value-based care and sustainable technology solutions.
In July 2022, we announced the limited market release and first patient implant of the Virtuos Lyograft, a first-of-its-kind, shelf-stable and complete autograft substitute for spine and orthopedic procedures. Virtuos is provided in a room-temperature, ready-to-use, moldable form offers significant logistical and cost-savings advantages to the hospital with improved shipping, storage, and operating room efficiency. The room temperature shipment and storage of Virtuos eliminates the use of large quantities of dry ice, Styrofoam shippers, and freezer storage, enabling flexible shipping options and reduced packaging, with the aim of a reduced carbon footprint.
We are also proud to be the first and only company in the U.S. to offer a free recycling program so patients can properly dispose of Bone Growth Therapy devices after use. We launched this innovative program in 2021 enabling Orthofix patients to recycle their devices for non-medical use once they complete treatment, thereby reducing the number of devices that end up in landfills after use. To date, we have sent shipping labels to more than 8,000 patients to facilitate recycling of these devices. Visit bonegrowththerapy.com to learn more about this groundbreaking new program.
We are committed to sustainable practices in our operations, manufacturing, and supply chain through the use of sustainable energy, waste reduction, and waste and equipment recycling.
Governance
It is our fundamental policy to conduct business in accordance with the highest ethical and legal standards. We have a comprehensive compliance and ethics program to promote lawful and ethical business practices throughout our domestic and international businesses and we require compliance training amongst all of our employees. Similarly, we require that our suppliers adopt sound human rights practices designed to treat workers fairly and with dignity and respect. We responsibly manage and influence the impacts of our distributors through our robust compliance and governance training.
We implement robust risk management programs to ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations governing ethical business practices, including our relationships with suppliers, customers and business partners, and our industry. Our IT team uses a combination of industry-leading tools and innovative technologies to help protect our stakeholder’s data. Our people are responsible for complying with our data security standards and complete mandatory annual training to understand the behaviors and technical requirements necessary to keep data secure.
Safety and Quality
The safety of our patients is of utmost importance. Our commitment to and focus on product quality and safety is evidenced by investments across the organization in quality systems and medical device regulation compliance. This topic is also the foundation of our Quality Driven policy, which is to improve patients’ lives through high-quality products, procedures, and services. We are committed to executing an effective quality management system that meets or exceeds global requirements. This focus has resulted in zero product recalls issued in 2022.
To enhance our commitment to this initiative, we launched a Corporate Responsibility metric in 2022 that links a portion of the annual bonus plan to employees’ success in achieving company-wide community engagement and volunteerism goals.
Promoting and protecting the safety of our workforce is also a top priority. Health and safety matters are responsibilities that we share throughout our organization. During the last few years, we evolved in these areas to meet the needs of our workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic. Employees’ safety risks vary depending on the roles they perform, and we seek to tailor our safety efforts accordingly. We periodically measure the sentiment of our employees through an employee engagement survey and share the results and applicable action items identified from the survey with our employees.