April 26, 2023 – Nick Walker is the Director of Operations at Novant Health in Huntersville, North Carolina. Read an excerpt from The Journal of Healthcare Contracting’s “Future Leaders”.
What interested you about a career in healthcare?
Being able to utilize my warehouse management skills while working for a premier healthcare organization is a great combination. I am drawn to the responsibility and challenges that come with providing healthcare supplies to our facilities.
Especially through COVID, our team was challenged with unprecedented circumstances, supply shortages and scenarios that we often times thought were insurmountable. I find these challenges motivating, especially when it comes to protecting the health and well-being of everyone around us.
What do you like about working in the healthcare supply chain? Was it a position you sought, or found out about once you began working in the field?
Before coming to this industry, I had no idea about all of the different products that went into hospitals and medical clinics. Our warehouse stocks everything from tissues and gloves to heart stints and surgical supplies. When our processes are flawed or our systems go down, it can literally be the difference between life and death.
Working for Novant Health has allowed me to understand the scope of hospital supply chains and has given me even more of a purpose to ensure that I do my job well. It’s really rewarding to know that our distribution group makes such a large impact on our hospital system.
In what ways has the supply chain changed over the last 2-3 years from your perspective?
COVID and all the challenges that came along with it really pushed supply chain into the forefront of the medical industry. Previously, we were a department that operated behind the scenes. Now, we are directly involved with our clinician counterparts and have open, two-way communication around supply levels and demand. We have the information that our physicians need, supplies and the infrastructure to help solve their problems.
The challenges have also transformed us from a just-in-time model to a just-in-case model. Before COVID, we wanted our operation and inventory to be as lean and streamlined as possible. We have since learned that we need to hold more inventory and expand our pandemic inventory past just PPE. It has really changed the way we approach disaster preparedness.
Read more in the latest issue of The Journal of Healthcare Contracting.