Gary Ellis, CFO of Medtronic, tells investors that the medical device company's size and scale give it an edge in overcoming changes in the healthcare environment.

Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) is better prepared than its competitors to adapt to changing environments in the global healthcare system, CFO Gary Ellis told investors today.

"There clearly seems to be a shift from [selling to] physicians to [selling] to hospital administrators," Ellis said in a 30-minute Q&A session at the Morgan Stanley Global Healthcare conference in New York. "In some countries it's the government [that is the customer] and you're selling to the payers directly. That's where size and scale have an advantage."