July 24, 2024- For a sizable swath of provider-based healthcare supply chain professionals, Robert T. Yokl served as a popular gateway to value analysis education and learning.In fact, those new to the industry and/or profession or in working in smaller urban, and suburban and rural organizations, Yokl functioned as gatekeeper and key master, providing a plethora of relevant and useful advice, recommendations and tips on developing, implementing and improving fundamental and best-practice value analysis processes, programs and thinking.
Yokl knew, understood and respected his audience, many of which served faithfully in the trenches of healthcare supply chain management and relied on his consulting, content and intelligence about supply chain, value analysis and purchased services to help their clinical customers succeed for their patients as well to help them improve within their own careers.
Yokl shared with Bellwether League Foundation in 2018 the contribution for which he would like to be most remembered. “I educated a generation of supply chain/value analysis professionals in the art and science of value analysis,” he said.
To encourage anyone to enter the healthcare supply chain field, he knew what he would tell them. “If you like people, have an analytic mind and are service-oriented, healthcare supply chain management is one of the greatest career paths to enter because the satisfaction in your job will be never-ending,” he said.
On Friday, July 12, Yokl gave his final salute to healthcare supply chain and passed away. He was 81.
Bellwether League Foundation (BLF) inducted Yokl into the Healthcare Supply Chain Hall of Fame as an honoree in the Bellwether Class of 2018.