Boston Scientific is a company that many people may not have heard of in the past. After all when a company makes it its business to service other businesses it is not often that the general public gives them much thought. For those of you who are not at all familiar with the company and what they do here is a look at how they have chosen to describe themselves, “Boston Scientific was founded on the simple premise that less-invasive medicine could improve patient care. We have remained committed to this promise since our founding three decades ago. Today we are a leading innovator of medical devices and technologies that improve patient lives.”

The company is getting ready to lay off an unspecified number of workers in what is being termed as a restructuring plan. The company has not put out a firm number at this time, but it is likely to be a mass layoff action. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.”

The only good news is that under the terms of a mass layoff action the company must be given a few weeks of notice before they are cut from the payroll and put onto unemployment. This is done to allow the workers and the community at large a chance to adapt to the job cuts.

Interestingly enough the company choose to highlight, in its most recent release, a new approval for a product, rather than talking about the serious changes that they are making to their company, “Boston Scientific Corporation (NYSE: BSX) has received CE Mark approval for use of its PRECISION™ PLUS SPINAL CORD STIMULATOR (SCS) System in patients with the system and are in need for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) head-only scans. The PRECISION PLUS SCS System is the world’s first rechargeable SCS device. This approval provides physicians with an additional diagnostic option for patients with chronic intractable pain.”

Of course other medical companies are also making cuts. For those of you who missed out on our earlier coverage that here is an excerpt from cuts at Royal DSM that will get you up to speed in no time at all, “The company is getting ready to get rid of about 1,000 workers in a move designed to help the company increase its profitability. These job cuts will be a loss of about 4 percent of the overall number of workers who are currently employed by the company. Interestingly enough when it comes to the company’s fiscal situation things don’t seem that bad at all. The company, in a press release about their second quarter report, which the company described as robust. Here is an excerpt from the information on their finances, “Q2 EBITDA from continuing operations €290 million (Q2 2011: €339 million)”