SPECIAL FOCUS
Making do with much ado by award- winning Supply Chain teams
by Rick Dana Barlow C
rises and disasters tend to draw out the best or worst of people as evidenced in their initial reactions and ongoing responses to what happened. A global pandemic that not only infected millions of people, but also proved fatal to hundreds of thousands, drained the sup- ply chain of available stock and cast a pall on its reputation, is no exception. The COVID-19 coronavirus afflicted all healthcare organizations universally – large and small, urban and rural, deco- rated and striving for recognition. As a result, Healthcare Purchasing News wanted to share with readers what top- ight award-winning organiations have been doing and thinking as they navigate through the ongoing crisis. HPN reached out to all 17 of the organizations that have earned “Supply Chain Department of the Year” recognition and status since the launch of the award in 2004.
Not surprisingly, many were swamped and engulfed in meeting the daily and accelerated demands and needs of caring for patients. Yet roughly half volunteered some of their busy time to share their insights on the challenge(s) the team faced, the solutions the team designed to achieve the desired outcome(s) and who was instrumental in the process. In ran- dom order chronologically, here’s what they shared.
Organization: Geisinger Health, Danville, PA
Supply Chain Department of the Year: 2008 (No. 5)
Joe Goyne, Senior Director, Logistics, Supply Chain Services, Geisinger, Wilkes- Barre, PA
Challenge(s) faced: Geisinger transitioned its prime distributorship in late summer 2019. As in any distributor conversion, we proactively planned for this transition to avoid the potential for stockouts or supply disruption by ensuring adequate supply on hand. The timing of this transition ulti- mately affected our allocation allotments
that were set by the manufacturers and distributors who were using utilization reporting from the time period not re ec- tive of true demand. Solution(s) delivered: Identifying the
root cause for variances between alloca- tion availability and forecasted demand allowed the team to identify gaps in product availability and alert our strategic sourcing team as to the need to proac- tively mitigate the impact caused by the situation. We also leveraged our supplier partners and GPO to identify opportuni- ties to participate in “spot buys” to offset additional demand needs. Also, a “non- traditional” sourcing checklist was devel- oped to engage new partners for sourcing high demand, hard-to-get supplies as the market tightened. We successfully navi- gated these new markets. Influential,
instrumental leaders:
Inventory Control, Distribution Center, Strategic Sourcing, Prime Distributor (Medline) and Group Purchasing Organi- zation (Premier), Legal and Finance.
Organization: M Health Fairview, Minneapolis
Supply Chain Department of the Year: 2017 (No. 14)
LeAnn Born, Vice President, Supply Chain, M Health Fairview, Minneapolis
Challenge(s) faced: Our health sys-
tem works with two different med/surg distributors because we have not yet integrated that service following the inte- gration of our two legacy health systems. We were able to turn this challenge into an effective way of communicating and solving problems with sourcing through major product disruptions. Solution(s) delivered: We set up daily huddles where M Health Fairview’s dis- tributor representatives from Cardinal and Owens & Minor joined a variety of staff from Supply Chain to review what was needed, what was ordered, in route, available to order, etc. Everyone has been creative together. This resulted in an
14 September 2020 • HEALTHCARE PURCHASING NEWS •
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incredible team that was able to set aside the competition that the two distributors might have known, collaboratively source products from the two distributors, direct from manufacturers and from alternative suppliers. For quite a while, these meet- ings were daily. We have reduced them now to weekly. Infl uential, instrumental leaders: At moments in time, it expanded beyond Supply Chain to include Infection Pre- vention, Nursing Practice and Education, Quality and Clinical Operations, but the long-standing participants have been local representatives and leaders from Cardinal and Owens & Minor along with Supply Chain staff from our sites, purchasing, value analysis, data and analytics, leader- ship and more.
Organization: Piedmont Health, Atlanta
Supply Chain Department of the Year: 2018 (No. 15)
Joe Colonna, Chief Supply Chain and Project Management Offi cer, Piedmont Health, Atlanta Challenge(s) faced: Determining a new usage rate on PPE products that suddenly became the most important and most-used items. We needed to know our total supply of these items in our distribution center and across all of our 11 facilities. We had to have real-time information to help us determine where we needed to move sup- plies around the system and a real-time report to show our command center. We were in a similar situation with ventilators and associated supplies. In addition, our suppliers suddenly became hit-or-miss on whether we would see our deliveries. Solution(s) delivered: We instituted a daily physical count of all supplies and ventilators at the sites and the distribution center. This information was entered into a manual report that went to the command center. By watching what was being used at the sites and in what quantities, we began to estimate our new utilization rates.
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