Audrey Branyon
Associate Director, Supply Chain Projects/Systems
Encompass Health Corp., Birmingham, Alabama
About Audrey Branyon:
Audrey Branyon was born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, by her parents, Tony (an industrial engineer) and Flossie. She has never strayed far from industrial engineering, receiving a bachelor’s degree in industrial and systems engineering from Auburn University (before earning an MBA from West Texas A&M University College of Business).
After graduating from Auburn, Branyon performed project management duties for a construction engineering firm that builds power plants. Though she found the work rewarding, she wanted to get into healthcare, having worked on a patient-wait-time project at a hospital for her senior design project.
Industrial engineering, she says, is all about promoting efficiency, whether it’s in a manufacturing plant or a healthcare facility. She takes the mission seriously. In 2017, she got her six sigma black belt to improve her skills in process improvement. “Working in healthcare supply chain permits me to utilize my skill set to improve the supply chain, which allows providers and patients to have the supplies and equipment needed for the possible best care,” she says.
About Encompass Health:
132 rehabilitation hospitals, 327 home health and hospice locations in 37 states and Puerto Rico. Encompass Health, which assumed its new name and brand in January 2018, is the result of the union of HealthSouth Corp. and Encompass Home Health & Hospice.
Most interesting/challenging project in the past 12-18 months:
“Standardizing advanced wound care supplies that we utilize over the health system’s network of 132 inpatient rehabilitation hospitals.” The project involved working with the clinical leadership team to reduce SKUs. “Many of our hospitals have varying levels of wound care programs, so ensuring that we had a wide breadth of products while considering cost and the overall number of products we were utilizing proved to be an interesting and rewarding project,” she says.
Working with Encompass’ national educational manager, Branyon helped put together a mobile application to help caregivers quickly look up wound type, suggested products and proper product usage. The app is supplemented with webinars and site visits. “We like to inundate people with information – but information that’s easy to digest, as we understand patient care is their first priority.”
Looking forward to:
“Over the next 12-18 months, I look forward to helping create reporting tools and dashboards with our IT developers to help our supply chain better identify areas of opportunity for financial savings in our network of hospitals.”
Biggest challenge/change facing healthcare supply chain professionals in the next 5 years:
Limiting the generational age gap within the profession. “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,” she says. “Hospitals should strive to have educational leadership programs within the supply chain department to ensure that the future generation will be well versed, so that we are able to continuously improve the environment. Knowledge of the healthcare environment is necessary, especially for supply chain, because we work with so many individuals. It’s good to understand how it works as a whole.” Two ideas: 1) Institute a formal mentoring program; 2) establish rotations through clinical and operational areas.