As 2025 draws to a close, one idea stands above all others. Real progress in healthcare comes not from any single technology, department, or contract. It comes from collaboration.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the world of sterile processing. In her cover feature, Kara Nadeau captures an important truth. Sterile processing professionals are among healthcare’s most vital yet often overlooked experts.
These are the people who ensure that every instrument touching a patient is safe, compliant, and ready. Yet, they are still fighting for visibility in conversations that shape their work, from purchasing and facility design to manufacturer instructions for use (IFUs) and surgical scheduling. The stakes are high. As one expert shared, a single oversight in reprocessing led to a $20.6 million lawsuit after a patient suffered a deep infection from improperly sterilized implants.
When SPD is absent from decision-making, hospitals risk far more than inefficiency. They risk patient safety, regulatory compliance, and financial stability.
Across the country, forward-thinking systems are beginning to change that. UCSF Health includes SPD leaders in new product evaluations through the GHX Lumere platform to confirm devices can be safely reprocessed. Nemours Children’s Hospital routes all instrument purchases through SPD to prevent reprocessing of single-use items. And at UC Davis Health, SPD professionals contribute to facility design to ensure sterilization workflows are built in and not bolted on.
That same spirit of collaboration fueled innovations like Michigan Medicine’s antimicrobial mouthguard, designed to prevent ventilator-associated pneumonia. It’s an illustration of how multidisciplinary teams with clinicians, engineers, procurement, and infection prevention can turn simple ideas into breakthrough solutions, as Matt MacKenzie discovered in his feature story.
But 2025 has also seen a broader redefinition of value in healthcare procurement, one that extends beyond the walls of any single hospital. In their series on value-based procurement, Brian Mangan and Randy Bradley challenge both payors and providers to move from simply cutting costs to creating value. Their most recent installment argues that the next frontier in procurement is about aligning incentives across the entire healthcare ecosystem, including payors, providers, and suppliers alike.
Their R.E.W.A.R.D. framework offers a roadmap for payors to lead. By incentivizing efficiency and improved patient outcomes rather than chasing transactional savings, payors can accelerate systemwide change. As Mangan and Bradley note, “Whether we like it or not, money talks.” The challenge is ensuring it speaks the language of value, not volume.
