Larry Wood: I think we continue to do a lot of new things. We’re running a number of programs. I think one of the things that I talked about at the investor conference is I know there’s a lot of speculation on — and skepticism, frankly, on the under-treatment rates and are all those patients really there. I can tell you we’ve done enough work in major health systems where we’ve applied things like AI to the echo reports, and we can absolutely definitively say the patients are there. They’re just not moving through the system for a variety of reasons. So, the first thing you have to do is validate. The second thing you have to do is get people to understand what to do about it, and then you have to move them through the process and get treated.
And we have multiple things that we’re working on to drive those patients through, but we are literally continually evolving these programs to try to optimize them to activate patients off the sidelines and move them through the system in a streamlined fashion.
Matt Taylor: Thanks a lot, Larry.
Operator: Our next question comes from Matt Miksic with Barclays. Please state your question.
Matt Miksic: Hi, thanks so much for taking the question. So, I had one on EVOQUE and one follow-up on margins if I could. So, not to put too fine a point on it, but moving from the middle of your TMTT range to the high end is like $10 million to $20 million. And so, if we think about EVOQUE came about five, six months early. Does that tell us what we need to know about your sort of expectations for the run rate this year knowing what we know now, I guess, in EVOQUE as we just get started in the US? And then I have one follow-up.
Daveen Chopra: No, Matt. Thanks so much for the question. It’s Daveen again. Yeah, if you first look at the timing of it, right, we kind of said midyear was kind of our initial estimation, and midyear has got a couple of months kind of window. So this definitely was up by a couple of months earlier than we kind of expected. And so, based on what we know now, we continue to be confident in what we think EVOQUE can do. And obviously, we’ll see as we get through adoption and we start moving through centers, training how fast the rate is, but that help us bring this up just a little bit. I think the other comment I’ll make is things like new technology add-on payments, right, which are helpful for hospitals to help ensure that they’re adequately kind of profitable and doing a good job comes online October 1, and that date doesn’t really change whether you get earlier approval or late approval.
So, there are some factors like that. But we’ll continue to look at as we adapt over the course of the year and how it grows and give updates as — if needed.
Matt Miksic: That’s great. And then the follow-up on the margins in Matt’s question just now on the activities that you’re getting after in the field. So, you hired these folks in — I guess, in the fourth quarter, which is part of the step up in spending there. Just wondering, first, does that have an impact in Q4? Can you talk a little bit about the benefits that you’re seeing so far from those investments in that? Second, are you continuing those investments? Or to your point earlier, Scott, about like leverage against those investments, are you kind of done and now it’s about achieving leverage against sort of a set additional spend that you put into the field? Thanks.
Scott Ullem: Yeah. Thanks for the question, Matt. Yeah, we’re just getting started with building out our field force both for EVOQUE, but as well as we continue to expand the presence of our overall TMTT portfolio. And so this is the beginning of an investment in building a foundation of a team in the field, not the end. You should expect that we’re going to continue to grow our resources, invest in the field team. And by the way, that’s not limited just to TMTT. TAVR continues to grow aggressively, and we’re investing more resources to support that growth as well. One of the things we’re doing, though, is looking carefully at general and administrative expenses globally. And as Edwards has put down a broader global footprint, it gives us an opportunity to get some leverage from scale. And so, we’re going to be continuing to look closely at that and making sure that we’re being as efficient as we can be on the P&L.
Matt Miksic: Okay. And then, the TAVR side, did you see any results you feel from these field activations and patient activation efforts in Q4? Or is that something that’s still to come? Thanks.
Scott Ullem: Yeah. Matt, I think we saw some benefit from patient activation initiatives that we have in place. It’s tough to isolate those from the other efforts that we have underway to continue to support the growth of TAVR. But no, that’s certainly helping drive growth in the fourth quarter and beyond.
Larry Wood: Just to add on to this, I mean, I think it’d be incorrect to say our patient activation efforts are just starting to pay dividends now. We’ve been doing patient activation for the last, I don’t know, five or six years through our digital campaigns through some of our website stuff, some of our patient resources, some of the general cardiology awareness events we do and a number of other things that have been driving this. So, I think patient activation has been contributing all the way along the way. I think what we’re talking about now, though, is a much more sophisticated approach and program to really tapping into these untreated patients that are in the system, but hospitals don’t really realize that they’re there, and how do we bridge those gaps.
