August 22, 2022 – George Godfrey is the Chief Supply Chain Officer, Corporate VP, Shared Services at Baptist Health South Florida. Read an excerpt from The Journal of Healthcare Contracting’s “10 People to Watch in Healthcare Contracting” below.
What are the most important attributes of successful supply chain teams today?
People are the most important component in creating and maintaining a successful supply chain. To be successful, team members need to be able to self-manage, and in order to do so, they need the accurate data and analytical tools to promote good decisions. Transparent and frequent communication as a team is another essential element. I have always believed that if you provide your team with the tools they need, they can and will do wonderful things.
What project or initiative are you looking forward to working on?
At Baptist Health South Florida, we are very fortunate to have developed a culture of continuous improvement and innovation within our team. For the past three years, we have designed business intelligence tools for all core functions, which have allowed us to deliver game-changing results – some of the best in the industry. We are now deploying a CRM solution (Salesforce) in an innovative way to be our communication engine. Additionally, we will be automating the communication loop related to match exceptions, concept to contract, item substitutions, value analysis and other transactions requiring iterative interactions between the supply chain team, our supply partners, and the departments we support. We want to win at communication every time, and we believe this tool will help us achieve that goal.
What changes brought about by the pandemic are here to stay in the supply chain?
Due to the pandemic, we have changed our perspective on supplier management, backorder management, item substitutions and market share agreements. We have found that having a single-source vendor and manufacturer in a specific geographic area can significantly affect patient care. The industry has been shifting toward market share agreements supporting a single-source strategy. But, given the lessons learned during the pandemic, we need to rethink that strategy.
When a supplier fails to deliver goods for any reason, be it their inability to source raw materials or profitably provide the goods at the contracted rate, they fail to deliver to multiple healthcare organizations tied to a market share commitment with that vendor. If they attempt to move to a new vendor to purchase the goods, they are penalized for not meeting their market share commitment, or worse; they cannot find enough product from alternate sources because the product is on allocation.
The success we realized in managing backorders and finding viable substitute products is attributable to gaining the trust of the clinicians and the support of senior management. At times, we had to make rather large financial decisions very quickly, which would not have been possible without the great teamwork throughout our organization. The relationships we have built with the clinicians and other departments within the organization during the pandemic have built the foundation for us to achieve new objectives more rapidly and effectively than before.
To see the rest of our 10 People to Watch in Healthcare Contracting list, click here.