Honoring Supply Chain Professionals in the New Age of Healthcare

• Scott Kelley, Vice President of North American Sales and Marketing

This week is the Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management’s (AHRMM) National Healthcare Supply Chain Week. Every year, AHRMM leads the industry in recognizing supply chain professionals that are instrumental in not only taking cost and waste out of healthcare, but also directly impacting patient care for the better. We congratulate AHRMM for putting the spotlight on the value of the supply chain in improving cost, quality and outcomes as exemplified by its CQO Movement.

If you frequent the Healthcare Hub – or are familiar with GHX – you know that it’s an exciting time for the healthcare supply chain. While it used to be regulated to a back-end, transaction-based function, the healthcare supply chain has become a critical component in today’s rapidly evolving healthcare industry. Healthcare organizations – across the continuum – are looking for ways to cut costs while simultaneously improving patient care. Provider and supplier organizations alike have found that their supply chains hold the key to making this vision a reality.

I’ve been at GHX for two years now, but for 15 years GHX has worked closely with customers who are at the forefront of leveraging the supply chain in new and innovative ways. And while these projects include pretty revolutionary strategies for cutting cost and waste, what we’re highlighting this week are some of the key ways that our customers are using the supply chain to optimize for efficiency in order to help improve patient care.

From leveraging data in new and exciting ways and creating clinical/supply chain teams, to exploring personalized medicine and extending supply chain beyond the hospital’s four walls, our customers are using the supply chain as a pivotal, strategic tool in today’s healthcare landscape.

In honor of National Healthcare Supply Chain Week, I am working on two blog posts, the top five ways that our customers are tapping their supply chains to improve patient outcomes on a daily basis. On Wednesday, I’ll share the first three trends: “Analyzing and Leveraging Outcomes Data,” “Establishing Clinical-Supply Chain Teams” and “Extending the Healthcare Supply Chain Outside of the Hospital.”

So congratulations to the terrific supply chain professionals I have the privilege of working with each week. Thank you for your passion and diligence in making sure the business of healthcare is working smoothly and effectively to support your clinical teams and the patients they serve.

And if you can’t wait to learn more about these projects, GHX issued a news release today on this very topic. Check it out here!

Scott Kelley

Vice President of North American Sales and Marketing