Director of Supply Chain and Value Analysis,
Rush University Medical Center
August 2024 – The Journal of Healthcare Contracting
Senad Odzic is the Director of Supply Chain and Value Analysis at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
Your team at Rush collectively saved over $6 million in less than 10 months. Tell us why that was such a big win.
I started at Rush about a year ago, coming over from another IDN in the Chicago area called Endeavor Health, and saw an opportunity to make an impact on our savings.
Looking at the categories and the IT department, there was a lot of opportunities for savings, and we redid our agreements. We looked at licensing and where we could reduce our amount of spend. We also found opportunities in purchased services with linen and made sure to use local, diverse suppliers. Finally, we found opportunities in capital to renegotiate some pricing.
That’s the 30,000-foot view.
Looking at the present and into the future with sustainability and local suppliers, are there any specifics or big goals you have?
We support DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and sustainability initiatives at Rush and a lot of our spend is with local suppliers. Our goal is to enhance conversion and give local suppliers more opportunities to sell all of their products at Rush to help our local community, businesses and patients.
We partner with the Fillmore Organization in Chicago, which is about three miles away from Rush, for linen. Filmore built a new factory we were the first one to sign an agreement with them. It’s a woman-owned business and hires local employees. About 60 to 100 jobs are being created because of this.
Previously, we would get our linens from Wisconsin, but now there will be less trucks on the street and less gas pollution. It’s a big part of our sustainability and diversity initiatives. We’re big on trying to source locally.
Talk about empowerment at Rush and giving your team the green light to do things.
I’m big about giving my team the power to seek out opportunities themselves for Rush, think about them and come together to discuss them. My goal for my team members is to grow and learn. If I tell them what to do, they’re not thinking for themselves, and I want them to look for opportunities at what could be done differently. We then come to the drawing board and discuss whether it makes sense or not.
Empowerment gives my team members a lot of different opportunities to come up with solutions to talk about. I don’t micromanage. I don’t believe in it. Then I’m doing their job and what’s the point in that?
They must grow and learn and make different decisions. Sometimes, we decide even if they’re wrong, that’s okay. But how do we learn from those decisions? What do we take from it in the future to not make the same mistake?
What does that look like leading a team in a post pandemic environment?
Being resilient. You have to be open to different things. You can’t be close minded, and you must think outside of the box to get different things worked out with suppliers.
Taking care of our patients is our top priority. That’s what we’re here for and we have to provide them with a quality of service that needs to be resilient and open to different kinds of thinking to get the job done.
That’s how I look at resiliency.
Expand on the impact that diversity and local suppliers have had at Rush.
I’m a big believer in diversity. I’m from Eastern Europe and the former Yugoslavia. Coming to the United States 30 years ago was different and I learned how to adapt.
There are so many local, diverse organizations that can bring opportunities to your organization, but you may not recognize it. If you go with large suppliers, they have a big corporate strategy, but local business owners, if you give them the opportunity to sell their products, are here and want to be successful.
They want to grow here. That’s important to me.
What are keys to a successful provider-supplier relationship today beyond price?
Every organization has to make its numbers, but it’s also about building relationships with suppliers into partnerships. I look at it as a long-term partnership in growing the business.
How are we going to grow, become more innovative and bring in different products or services?
You have to be strategic in your thinking. Partnering with suppliers is about understanding what’s new, how to develop it, how to come up with new ideas and how to bounce back with those suppliers who’ve become partners, especially with the local suppliers.
We try to help the local, diverse suppliers come up with different products that are even better than the national suppliers can provide.