Welcome to the annual Ten People to Watch in Healthcare Contracting issue. Each year, The Journal of Healthcare Contracting shines the spotlight on supply chain leaders and the contributions they’ve made to their organization’s success as well as the industry.
These interviews are a chance for us to ask supply chain leaders a wide array of questions. We hear from them on topics such as leadership, organization success, effective supplier relations, what keeps them up at night, and more.
What I noticed in this year’s bunch is a willingness (maybe even eagerness) to look beyond the pandemic and future proof their organizations for tomorrow’s challenges. What I mean by that is, they’re not remaining pat with what worked yesterday. They’re not remaining static in their approaches to cost savings, purchased services strategies or even supplier relations. With the rise in inflation, workforce shortages and disruptions to product categories, they can’t. Nor can their supplier partners if they want to remain viable to today’s providers.
I thought Shireen Ahmad, Interim Vice President, GPO Business, Financial Insights, and Analytics, CommonSpirit Health® said it well when we asked her about lessons learned from the last few years. “You have to be nimble enough to mobilize quickly when a disruption is imminent and have relationships established with key vendors. You have to constantly survey the environment for disruptions and shortages, develop contingency plans quickly and execute on them.”
We hope you enjoy reading their stories and can take some of their best practices and use them in your own supply chain teams. Thank you for reading this issue of The Journal of Healthcare Contracting.