August 30, 2022 – Jane Torzewski is the Director, Category Management, Medical Device Team at the Mayo Clinic and Captis. 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?
We ensure that the contracts team is engaging closely with the clinical practice side and that administrative support works with the clinical side too to meet their needs. The contracting process, the bid process and also the legal terms and conditions are all a part of that.
My role is making sure we meet our timelines. I’ve had the fortunate experience of working in value analysis when I’ve been in contracting. I managed most of our ortho and neuro agreements until a couple of years ago, many of which are in the med/surg area, so I have expertise to guide the team.
How has the contracting process changed in the past two years as well as your relationships with suppliers?
We’ve learned to be much more agile in our approach to contracting. We have to pivot very quickly when we have issues with supply constraints – when we’re trying to put out a fire. In my world, we’re seeing real constraints on supplies due to manufacturing issues like raw material concerns and freight concerns.
Relationships with suppliers are interesting. We’re not highly committed at a 90% rate, for example, with one supplier for med device. It just doesn’t make sense. Actually, having more of a mix of suppliers – a few more suppliers than just one – has helped us be a little more flexible in meeting our practice needs, especially in this environment. Also, do we pay more for reliability? Those are the conversations we’re having now.
Mayo stood up a strong business continuity team prior to the pandemic. As we’ve worked with that team, looking at our three- or six-month risks, we’ve pulled in some different factors like diversification of suppliers and their redundancies. The pandemic forced us to ask questions at a deeper level.
To see the rest of our 10 People to Watch in Healthcare Contracting list, click here.