Director, Supply Chain Distribution & Logistics, Supply Chain, Northwestern Memorial Healthcare
April 2024 – The Journal of Healthcare Contracting
Alisha Beringer’s journey to healthcare came through a passion and goal of helping others. She studied psychology in college, receiving both a bachelor’s and master’s degree. While searching for her “dream job,” she took what she thought would be a temporary position with a healthcare distributor.
However, the organization continued to challenge Beringer and grow her skillsets, giving her the opportunity to still help others, but within hospitals. “The connections and relationships I made eventually led me to an opportunity to transition to the provider side of the healthcare supply chain,” said Beringer, now Director, Supply Chain Distribution & Logistics, Supply Chain, Northwestern Memorial Healthcare. “With all my knowledge of provider pain points, I was looking forward to the opportunity of having a more direct impact on change.”
Since joining the Northwestern Medicine Supply Chain team, Beringer has been able to be a collaborative change leader using partnership and trust to help bridge the gap between clinical and supply chain. She has also been able to implement strategic solutions to resolve challenges and enhance workflows that have positive impacts.
“Overall, my career path in healthcare has allowed me to continue to help others and make significant impacts to patient care in various indirect ways,” she said. “A small change to a workflow or a process can have a large positive downstream impact to our caregivers and ultimately our patients, and that is something I am proud to say I can be a part of.”
Priorities and problem-solving
In a post pandemic setting, today’s supply chain teams are focused on being more resilient amid constant uncertainty in product availability.
“As a hospital supply chain, our goal is to make sure our caregivers have what they need so our patients receive the care they deserve,” Beringer said. But in order to do that, they need open communication, visibility of data, and true partnership with suppliers. Since the uncertainties of global supply chain still exist, hospitals have had to learn to be quick to problem solve and do a lot with a little – all while trusting their vendor partners are doing their part to ensure they keep supply disruptions to a minimum and are being proactive in their communication. “Although we have made some improvements over the last few years, many vendors still work siloed and reactive, viewing the relationship as supplier and customer, rather than being on the same team working together to achieve the same goal.”
In order to help build a clinically integrated supply chain, Beringer has recently been focused on introducing more digitization and automation. “One way has been to implement an RFID technology in all our Surgical and Procedural departments.” This technology enabled the ability to push the expectation of how inventory could be managed and overall create a partnership between clinical and supply chain departments that promotes an efficient and financially responsible environment. “We have improved our overall rate of product expiration by 78% and supply waste by 50%. We also now have the visibility to track and quantify unaccounted for products and use data utilization to make informed inventory decisions.”
In addition to digitizing product on the shelf, Beringer has sought to solve the challenge of Bill-Only payments for vendor owned implants. Through deep collaboration and a focus on building quality into the process, a new platform was developed with one of Northwestern’s vendor partners to automate and visualize vendor implant spend. The creation and implementation of this tool has aligned clinical and financial data, while reducing the manual intensive process, which led to several improvements.
“We saw a reduction in manual labor hours by more than 82%, which optimized resource allocation, enabling efficient use of staff resources and reducing administrative workload,” Beringer said. “We were able to enhance accuracy in vendor and clinical billing (over 99% improvement in EHR documentation accuracy), avoiding overpayments and financial discrepancies. We provided a quicker bill cycle both on the supplier and provider side – 63% of bills were being submitted by reps in less than 1 day along with a 22x increase in bills processed to a Purchase Order within 3 days, overall improving efficiency and reducing administrative costs.”
Leadership
Today’s supply chain teams need leaders that promote successes and encourage development, Beringer said. “Many organizations do not recognize how integral Supply Chain is in the overall operations and are often times not recognized for the daily efforts to make sure the organization not only can serve our patients but do so in a financially responsible way,” she said. “At Northwestern, our Supply Chain teams work hard to promote our successes within our department, as well as within our overall organization. We also strive to be servant leaders and create a culture of learning and sharing between leaders, peers and departments, sharing lessons learned and working together to create more efficient workflows and environments.”
Also, it’s important for leaders to prioritize investment in technology and analytics, big or small. “With current climates of supply and labor shortages, it is important to have tools in place to make the tasks in supply chain more efficient and less labor intensive, all while providing the data to help make better business decisions and help predict future risks,” she said.
Sidebar:
What motivates Alisha Beringer to succeed?
- Having the chance to make an impact. “I consider everyone a customer and my motivation to succeed is knowing I have the ability to help impact someone’s day-to-day either a little or a lot.”
- A commitment to continuous learning and growth. “I am a lifelong learner and constantly pursuing information and opportunities to expand my knowledge and skillsets. I would rather be taught the how and why than simply be given the answer.”
- Collaboration. “I enjoy working with others to root cause the problem and creating a solution together.”