MARC Custom Medical Products (MCMP) Program Overview
MCMP Status Report (PDF) - Sept.2009
MARC’s Custom Medical Products (MCMP) program is an innovative rural development strategy deployed by MARC in July 2006. MCMP joins nine MARC member Community Rehabilitation Programs in a partnership to manufacture custom disposable surgical drapes and other products used in the healthcare industry. The key objective for this venture is to create manufacturing jobs with a majority targeted for people with disabilities.
The key objective for MARC
Custom Medical Products is
to create manufacturing
jobs with a majority
targeted for people with
disabilities
MARC members are located in rural or serve areas; the vast majority of North Carolina Community Rehabilitation Programs are also located in rural areas. The MCMP program is particularly innovative in that business growth is achieved in and by centers that are driven by a social enterprise mission; their nonprofit status and geography of service means that they are not subject to relocations, buyouts and short-term profit motivations. However, CRPs are profit-oriented because as a practical reality, disability program services are supplemented or fully paid for by commercial enterprise; for some programs only about half of the resources necessary are provided by state agencies.
MARC’s commercial success will require hiring additional employees to do specific work in order to deliver products to paying customers. The simplicity and directness of this strategy is one if its strongest features — MARC measures its effectiveness in direct financial terms and in direct jobs created.
Preparation of disposable surgical drapes
MARC’s integrated workforce targets people with disabilities who many times have fewer options for gainful employment than the mainstream population. Serving this people with a disability is integral to the charter and tax-exempt status of CRPs. Thus, MARC’s Custom Medical Products program is by definition targeted at improving employment and wages of people with disabilities and other low-income citizens. MCMP meets two critical needs for communities – that of reducing the unemployment rate of people with disabilities and of having a business platform that is integral to the community and not subject to relocation or isolated profit motivation.
According to the National Institutes for the Severely Handicapped, the unemployment rate nationwide for people with disabilities is 70%. According to an Economic Impact study conducted by Western Carolina University in March 2009, in the region served by MARC there is a 50.1% higher occurrence of employment among people with disabilities than the national average. Much progress has been made; there remains much to do. The MCMP program can be replicated in other rural communities.
Automated fabric cutter in use at MARC
Custom Medical Products
MARC has achieved exceptional results over thirty years of collaboration among its members. Over that thirty years, there have been many lessons learned that are culminating in the Custom Medical Products program. We believe that critical elements of our success can be more easily replicated – and over a much shorter time frame – through intentional planning and management.
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