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I think the secret formula to supply chain leadership is to never forget who your customers are. One of the challenges of managing in a large IDN is that you are not in the hospital every day, but I make a point of being visible in our hospitals as much as possible. I also continuously emphasize customer service first and foremost with my management team. If you don’t exceed customer expectations in operational performance, you can forget about being successful in strategy deployment.

My boss recently shared the following quote with me from Tom Landry, ‘Leadership is getting someone to do what they don’t want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.’ To me that summarizes supply chain management.

As hospitals are moving toward more lean processes in the patient delivery model, supply chain will need to develop creative solutions to support these models. One of the challenges will be to convince hospital leaders that supply chain may be an area in which to invest resources to improve operational efficiencies at the patient bedside, rather than viewing us as a traditional support department that can afford to reduce staff when hospitals become financially challenged.

That might have been true 10 or 15 years ago. However, I believe supply chain managers have evolved tremendously in their strategic thinking over the past decade. I think the key for today’s material manager is to demonstrate an understanding of the organization’s strategy and to offer solutions to the ‘C-suite.’ We should invest time in reading books on business strategy, attending educational seminars and reading a variety of trade journals – not just those pertaining to supply chain. Find a mentor who is well-respected in the organization and soak up as much information as possible.

Early attempts 5-6 years ago to negotiate IDN pricing for implants. We were not culturally or strategically prepared to be highly successful.

I think we exceeded the organization’s expectations in our implant contracting initiatives over the past two years. We did a good job of engaging the hospital presidents, our physicians and department managers to accomplish some great savings. It was tremendously satisfying to see us hold our ground with the vendors and to bring our cost down to a point that gives us an opportunity to make a margin on these cases.

If I could think of something to change, I would have changed it already.

The toughest administrative challenge is access to data. Unfortunately, some of the ERP solutions have not offered the data mining capabilities promised, so we are looking outside of these systems to find solutions to meet our data needs. This could come from GPOs, distributors or custom software solutions.

Manual data loads. I look forward to having the ability someday to electronically upload GPO contracts into our MMIS.

First, we are implementing a Clinical Technology Assessment Committee late this summer to engage physicians in a process to help us decide on the appropriate adoption of technology for our hospitals. This committee will have a physician membership majority, with Supply Chain, Finance and Managed Care contracting support. With over 4,000 new technologies coming to market each year, it is clear that we need a process to evaluate the clinical effectiveness of technology, patient safety, the associated education and training requirements, and to evaluate the potential financial impact.

Second, we will be reviewing the opportunity to develop an IDN formulary for pharmaceuticals. SSM St. Louis spends approximately $40 million in drugs, and we believe there is great potential for a formulary to reduce cost, reduce variation and improve patient safety, by working with our physicians on a more standardized approach to medication management.

Also, while supply chain has been working closely with reimbursement on a case by case basis, I believe there is great opportunity to develop a more formalized relationship between reimbursement, managed care contracting and supply chain. We are still trying to figure out the best structure for this, but I believe there is great potential for this type of alliance.

Capital and human resources will be our biggest challenge. We will continue to position ourselves to demonstrate increased value to the organization for resources invested.

The most enjoyable part of working in supply chain is our people. I am very fortunate to have a staff that is truly dedicated to supporting our customers in our hospitals. For example, over the past year, St. Louis has endured three major power outages lasting multiple days, and our staff in the centralized office and hospital resource management areas consistently made it to work despite any personal challenges, and made sure our patients had the supplies they needed. We score very high in our customer satisfaction surveys, and I can’t remember the last complaint I received about an operational problem.

Keeping up with the rapid changes in clinical technology.

I am very fortunate to have Ron Levy as a CEO. From the day I started in this position back in 1996, Ron has pretty much let me run with any new idea for process improvement and cost reduction. He has a great understanding of the impact a well run supply chain can have on the SSM St. Louis organization and has given me tremendous support.

I report to the SSM Health Care-St. Louis COO, Mike Graue, and I couldn’t ask for a better individual to work for. Having overall responsibility for operations at our eight hospitals, he has a phenomenal understanding of each hospital’s strategy and operational challenges. I am given regular access to his monthly meetings with the hospital presidents and attend 3 to 4 meetings per year to discuss supply chain strategies and to provide supply cost updates. I have great support from Mike and the presidents. I couldn’t ask for a better situation.

We need to bring more automation into our supply distribution process and we continue to review this opportunity. I try to take an organizational view of our capital needs, and it has been difficult to propose a large expenditure on technology given other pressing needs.

SSM’s mission is ‘Through our exceptional services, we reveal the healing presence of God.’ This is one simple statement that summarizes our purpose. If you live the mission, patient satisfaction is engrained in everything you do.

If I could change one perception about our department, it would be that we are only concerned about price and that we are not concerned about quality. What we are really interested in is value, in terms of purchasing products and services based on quality, service and cost.

Taking back responsibility for linen distribution services at a couple of our hospitals after it had been moved to Housekeeping. While I certainly believe that supply chain provides value to managing linen services, it is probably the most thankless role in the hospital.

In 2002, SSM Health Care became the first healthcare winner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, therefore CQI processes are hard-wired into the organization. When I look back at some of our major accomplishments, they’ve really come from continuous incremental improvement rather than wildly creative, earth shattering change. We’re doing the same things other IDNs are doing in supply chain, focusing on patient safety, developing strong physician alignment, reducing waste, and improving efficiency. But I think because we are constantly looking to improve, and because we are strong in benchmarking and metrics, our culture allows for faster and smoother uptake of new processes.

They know we will not let them down and that we will find a way to make sure they have the supplies they need to take care of their patients. They also know down deep that through supply chain’s influence to use certain contracts we help them meet their supply budget.

Well, I imagine there is some sense of loss of control as we have centralized most purchasing decisions. We keep our departments involved in the decision-making, and I think they understand our cost containment role in the organization.

We are fortunate to have a great relationship with our departments and professionals.

I think materials managers need to listen to physicians and clinicians and understand their needs. I find that most of the time supply chain and clinical professionals reach the same conclusion when all facts are considered.