Executive Insights

Annually, I anticipate the release of Gartner’s ranking of the top 25 Healthcare Supply Chain leaders. They have been doing this for 15 years now, and on December 13th, the 2023 rankings were released. View here. Rankings are based upon both quantitative measures and opinion components.

Many of these leading IDN organizations in the 2023 rankings are loyal IDN attendees.

But why should we care about this list of the “best” IDNs? At Intermountain Healthcare, we built a very efficient supply chain organization. Through learning and adapting from many of the top organizations in the country, I was able to add to my non-healthcare supply chain experience and make Intermountain a top-rated Gartner organization.

How do we pick and apply best practices? Here are some good ideas:

Go study everyone else, locate the most innovative ideas and apply them to your own company.
When you find a best practice, adopt and adapt!
Moving quickly on what you have learned IS a best practice.

Several weeks before the release of the Gartner Healthcare Top 25 for 2023, Eric O’Daffer, Vice-President Analyst for Garner, wrote an article highlighting the 5 Big Changes Over 15 Years of the Healthcare Supply Chain Top 25. In summary, his findings gave the following five changes:

Maturity of the healthcare IDN supply chains – stronger organizations and increased use of the title “Chief Supply Chain Officer”.
Size and role of governance – larger organizations with more span of control over non-labor spend of their companies.
Responding to disruption - greater risk management capabilities.
Digital supply chain rising fast – improved analytics maturity.
Environmental, social and governance initiatives – more focus on issues such as diversity spending, sustainability and community health.

At the end of 2022, I surveyed 60 Supply Chain executives to assess real change that had occurred over the past five years in the healthcare supply chain. My findings were inconclusive as there WAS change but it was SLOW and COVID-19 had impacted many opportunities.

Eric O’Daffer said that “…progress has been impressive (over the past 15 years) and we’re approaching a crossroads in changes I believe will occur in the next decade.” I respect Eric very much and appreciate his perspective of the industry.

My purpose in writing this article is to bring attention to the organizations who get results by adopting best practices. We should all be aware of those who excel around us and use their success as inspiration to go forward with courage.