One of the noteworthy pleasures of interviewing supply chain-focused hospital and healthcare system CEOs for more than a decade and sharing their thoughts with Healthcare Purchasing News readers is getting to know these esteemed and high-ranking C-suite executives behind their corporate fortress walls.

HPN considers it a privilege that the 37 men and women profiled in these pages each January carve valuable time out of their busy schedules to participate. They must receive countless requests from a variety of media outlets to educate or enlighten the public about some cause or to promote some health-related or system-related issue. No doubt these media requests represent welcome exercises in community relations as opposed to explaining some bad news or reacting to negative publicity.

The CEOs who "Support, Understand, Recognize and Empower" supply chain operations that we choose to honor with our annual SURE award don’t lip-sync their support of the profession. They remain actively engaged and involved in a way that should be emulated by the majority who don’t seem to mind supply chain operations nearly as much, if at all.

What inspires and provokes us to continue offering this annual feature is how dedicated and die-hard these SURE CEOs are to the function and process as they demonstrate how they connect the dotted line between the storeroom or warehouse (and even farther back to the suppliers) to the clinician and the patient.

One tidbit we love to learn from SURE CEOs is what question Supply Chain professionals ask them the most — even if Supply Chain does not occupy a seat in the C-suite. Very early on we started to spot a common theme. Marveling that CEOs even acknowledged Supply Chain’s questions and that Supply Chain pros bothered to ask, we noted that many times Supply Chain pros asked CEOs about how to work with physicians.

That inspired us further. Were there any supply chain-minded physicians in the industry — those that countered the stereotypical doctor screaming at the nurse for handing him the wrong product or belittling the materials manager who denies him the higher-cost device from his favorite supplier that showers him with swag?

We weren’t limiting our unofficial background research to the proliferation of value analysis/management programs that recruited physician support. Those that were pulled into the process for a variety of reasons were commendable. But those that pushed their way into the process represented more of a curiosity. Were they "switching sides" legitimately or merely infiltrating operations to influence decisions for their own ends? We find the former becoming a welcome reality in healthcare even as cinematic and television melodramas feature the latter.

Among the trifle of supply chain executives from the hospitality, manufacturing, retail and other industries migrating into healthcare positions we now see a handful of physicians taking more active supply chain leadership roles in some of the top-tier medical institutions. In fact, educational sessions about physician-led or physician-driven supply chain operations punctuated the annual AHRMM conference in Indianapolis last summer and inspired us to accelerate our efforts to unwrap a simmering brand extension of our SURE awards this summer.

In July, HPN will roll out its first annual PURE awards where we honor and profile "Physicians Understanding, Respecting and Engaging" Supply Chain professionals to enhance their clinical practices and the patient care they deliver.

We feel this represents a fresh new frontier for HPN to explore even as we continue to monitor other supply chain trends around data standards, GPO consolidation, sourcing innovations, sterile processing and surgical/critical care and infection prevention business practices, as well as keep a wary eye on payers maneuvering into the supply chain realm.

This just reinforces the weathered axiom: Change is here, change is deep; embrace that future and your job you’ll keep.