Mark Thill
Where will future ‘Future Leaders’ come from?
It’s always interesting to learn how people find their way into this business. After all, very few dream about being a healthcare supply chain executive as kids. But once they find themselves in it, well, it just clicks. That’s true for many of this year’s “Future Leaders in Supply Chain.”
Adrienne Ainsworth at Advocate Aurora Health, for example, had once thought about direct patient care, but instead accepted a role at UHS (now Agiliti), supporting clinical engineering services and later, managing purchasing and logistics. “Once I got into the industry, I realized I really enjoyed the business side of healthcare,” she says. “I love collaboration and the thrill of being able to provide great solutions to help people in a different way outside of direct patient care.”
Ruvini Schultz at Centura Health was born with an interest in life sciences. Her own systemic autoimmune disease found her in contact with healthcare providers starting in high school. But it wasn’t until graduate school, when she heard a presentation about the reach of healthcare supply chain, that she even thought about supply chain. She applied for an internship and found that the profession “fulfilled my passion to find solutions in areas such as patient safety, cost reduction, patient education, process improvement and value analysis.”
Andrei Tabara at Intermountain worked on a continuous improvement project as an undergrad, and found he had an interest in healthcare operations. “I am very process-oriented. I try to create infrastructure where it doesn’t exist.” Supply chain was – and is – a good fit for him.
People find their way to healthcare supply chain via many different paths. Still, there might be some things we as an industry can nudge good people into the field.
Jennifer Taylor, for example, has been working on creating a meaningful, structured program for supply chain interns at UHS. “We are currently in Year 2 and have an established program that feeds into our career ladder and includes a pool of highly qualified candidates.”
Audrey Branyon at Encompass Health told us, “I believe there should be more emphasis on educating students on the possibilities and the skills that are necessary to enter into a career in healthcare supply chain.” Hospitals should create educational leadership programs within supply chain “to ensure that the future generation will be well versed, so that we are able to continuously improve the environment.”
The need to attract and keep young talent will only grow.
“In the past, people would leave one healthcare organization to work for another one,” say Ryan Rotar, UNC Health Care. “Now, people are leaving to work for Amazon or another 3PL. So in this regard, we have to change the way we staff, recruit and run our operations.”
“Healthcare supply chain needs the best and brightest people,” says Jun Amora at Geisinger. “Are we attracting those people to join our profession? The future of healthcare supply chain will require new solutions – the application of AI, blockchain, digital transformation, etc. Can we look to healthcare supply chain to solve business problems that can then be applied to other industries – instead of the other way around (as it is today)?”