Taking The Supply Chain Pulse
ENGINEERING A BETTER HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
Taking The Supply Chain Pulse
Resilience and Innovations in the Challenging Inner City Healthcare Environment with Eric Tritch
What if the key to a more resilient and effective healthcare system lies in the experiences of a former computer engineering student from Western Pennsylvania? Join us as we chat with Eric Trich, the Senior Vice President of Supply Chain and Support Services and Chief Supply Chain Officer at the University of Chicago Medicine. Eric's journey from Michigan State University to leadership roles at Loyola University Medical Center and UChicago Medicine offers a fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of the healthcare supply chain. Along the way, Eric discusses how his diverse background has informed his approach to solving complex challenges in an urban hospital setting.
From adapting best practices across industries to navigating the unprecedented pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic, Eric reveals how his team has remained resilient and innovative. Listen in as we explore his insights on managing high-quality care in underserved communities, tackling the financial hurdles of Medicare and Medicaid, and the competitive dynamics of staffing. Eric also sheds light on everyday operational challenges like patient transport and public safety, sharing lessons on fostering a people-centered design in healthcare. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of healthcare, leadership, and supply chain management.
Hey there everybody. This is Fred Kranz from St Onge here today with another episode of Taking the Supply Chain Pulse. Today we're fortunate to have Eric Trich from the University of Chicago Medicine and a 2015 Future Famer Award winner from the Bellwether League, the National Healthcare Supply Chain Hall of Fame. Eric, thanks for joining us.
Eric Trich :Yeah, Fred, great to be here and happy to spend some time and chat here a little bit.
Fred Crans :Well, today it's 90 degrees here in Cleveland. What's the weather like in Chicago?
Eric Trich :I think we're feeling the heat dome, heat wave effects as well and, uh, you know, it certainly impacts us. Uh, we see things kind of spike in terms of our, our ED and trauma volumes on days like this too. So it impacts us in multiple ways, but uh, we'll get through it.
Fred Crans :Yeah, we'll, we'll get to that. Uh, you guys have a unique situation your inner city centered organization and we'll talk about that later. But tell us so you know. Start everything off by telling us about yourself, your background and you know how you got to where you are today.
Eric Trich :Yeah, happy to. So currently my role here I've been with UChicago Medicine for about 13 years actually. My current role is the Senior Vice President of Supply Chain and Support Services and Chief Supply Chain Officer. And I'll kind of start at the beginning and sort of tell you how I got to U of C and in my current role.
Eric Trich :But you know background grew up in Western Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, a town called Butler, pennsylvania, and out of high school landed at Michigan State University. Initially thought I wanted to be a computer engineer, but a few years into that path, you know, realized I wanted to learn more about business and entrepreneurship and learned about supply chain at Michigan State and their program and they've had a really strong program, and so I was fortunate to be able to pivot into an undergraduate degree that combined engineering and supply chain there, and so that ended up being a really great mix for me to blend those two and get an engineering degree but get some of that supply chain know-how coming out of Michigan State. My first kind of full-time job out of school was with a manufacturing company in the Minneapolis area, so not in healthcare, but an industrial manufacturing company called Graco and they pumps and paint spraying equipment, and you know it was a midsize public company got to learn a lot about manufacturing, about lean processes, about global manufacturing, supplier relationship management, got to spend some time in Asia and learn sort of about the global supply chain and some of the things that we were doing there. So it was a great experience for me. But both I think you know after a stint there, both because you know I didn't at the end of the day, feel incredibly connected to the products and the dynamics of a public company and sort of meeting the challenges around monthly returns, shareholder returns and stock prices the challenges around monthly return, shareholder returns and stock prices.
Eric Trich :Also, it was a little far from home for me and my wife, who I had met at Michigan State, was from the Michigan area. So we looked to move to the Chicago area and we've been in Chicago or the Chicago suburbs for 15 or so years a little longer. First moved and took a job in consulting again outside of healthcare, was doing work in strategic sourcing for Fortune 500 companies and traveling quite a bit and seeing how different organizations operated and spent some time learning about you know what it takes to be a consultant and how to present yourself to executive leadership. Did that for a little bit, realized that wasn't for me long term and sort of looked at where I wanted to go next and healthcare appealed to me as an industry that I thought aligned with my interests and the impact you could have, and something that was more a little more domestic focused.
Eric Trich :Although the supply chain is global, it is a little bit more of a domestic focused supply chain in terms of our efforts in the provider space.
Eric Trich :So I got an opportunity to take on a sourcing and contract management role at Loyola University Medical Center in the western suburbs in Maywood, illinois, and worked for a guy by the name of John Stegner who has since retired, but he was a longtime sort of automotive and industrial supply chain expert that was brought into healthcare to help bring some of those best practices to healthcare and he was looking to recruit a team that was from outside of healthcare that could bring some experiences into the healthcare supply chain, and so I got hooked up with him there.
Eric Trich :We were at Loyola together for about a year and Loyola got acquired by Trinity Health out of Michigan and so their corporate supply chain functions were sort of based in Michigan and John ended up taking a role with some of the leadership that had moved from Loyola to University of Chicago at the time and I had an opportunity to either come to University of Chicago or potentially look for opportunities within Trinity.
Eric Trich :We decided we wanted to stay in the Chicago area, so took the opportunity to come to UChicago and start sort of in a sourcing and contracting role to build that team and function here and value analysis and such, and since then I've been able to build that team. Took over for John when he retired about seven or so years ago for the responsibility for the system supply chain and then since then I've had some opportunities to take on some additional support services functions. So environmental services and patient transport three or four years ago was added to my portfolio and then most recently I'm taking on leadership for public safety and parking operations for the health system. So a new area for me to learn and see how we can have some positive impact.
Fred Crans :You know it's interesting when you told me about John's background, coming into healthcare from outside of healthcare and bringing in best practices, and the fact that you had a formal educational training in supply chain and I'm sure that it was supply chain, not specifically healthcare, supply chain right. One of the things that I've noticed and that people of my I learned a new phrase yesterday I love this phrase of my age cohort have learned it's not age group anymore, it's age cohort. Much more impressive have learned is that many times organizations naively either not naively purposely hired folks from outside of healthcare to bring best practices into healthcare. But perhaps the folks who came in from outside of healthcare to bring best practices into healthcare, but perhaps the folks who came in from outside of healthcare came in naively and didn't understand the nuances and differences of life within healthcare compared to life within Ford Motor Company. Okay, did have you noticed what? What did you? What did you learn about differences in healthcare and the training that you've been given at Michigan State and a legitimate supply chain, shall we say?
Eric Trich :Yeah, no, I think that's a really fair question and I've seen you know both my experience and others that I've worked with over the years who have made some of those types of transitions, and I think I've seen some maybe handle it better than others, you know, certainly, I think the process control, the standard work, the visual, the visual factory sort of management, error proofing processes, root cause analysis and 5Y type problem solving, you know all of that, I think, has translated incredibly well. I do think, and because that has been a step change over the years for healthcare supply chain, there is a style in terms of how to get from point A to point B and how you engage with folks and communicate and keep the patient care aspects in mind, realizing that people who get into healthcare you know by and large not everyone, but by and large, you know have a service-based mindset. It's a different world and when you're dealing with service-based people interaction, there are elements that are very different from, you know, a shop floor and a manufacturing setting, and so those things need to be accounted for. Even things as simple as terminology, I think you know I found very early on there were some terminology that in a non-healthcare setting you know people would be very comfortable with.
Eric Trich :But things that you know someone might say that you know you really need to think about in a healthcare environment. You know when you, when you talk about operations and processes and problem solving and. But I think you know I've seen where there's a lot of opportunity, both both from the sort of automotive and industrial manufacturing sector but also from the retail supply chain. I found a ton of overlap and opportunity in terms of how you know retail demand planning works and you know thinking about, you know shelf presence that we, you know we sort of have within healthcare that more aligns to a retail supply chain. And you know you know the distribution logistics of a retail supply chain I think translate in some cases more to a health system than you know some of the upfront sort of manufacturing type operations as well. But generally I've found there to be a lot of value in it. It's been more about sort of the style and approach and being able to meld those cultures together.
Fred Crans :Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I think that you started out sort of linearly, with the exception of the fact that you didn't start out in supply chain immediately, but you started out in a linear thing from your education to entree to doing work, whereas many of the other folks that I was talking about were stars in some other industry, who'd been in the other industry for 25 years and came into healthcare and could not understand what Yogi Berra once said, that baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical. And I think that in healthcare the supply chain is 90% human interaction and understanding the needs of the people you're serving and the other half is technical. And my observation about those who have failed coming from the outside, is that they thought it was just a direct one-for-one transference of doing what they did over here to doing it in healthcare, transference of doing what they did over here to doing it in healthcare. And you've been fortunate enough to have come in with a formal background.
Eric Trich :a formal training and with a mind open enough to learn the interpersonal skills that are required, yeah, no, and when you're dealing with sort of people interaction and we spend a lot of time in our operations trying to I mean intentionally say how can we take the people as much out of the process as possible?
Eric Trich :Because often that's where our processes sort of fail, because trying to get a large number of folks to be trained and follow a consistent process can be difficult. So we try to error-proof that, minimize interaction and have things to sort of foolproof that, and that's often where we see some of the breakdown. But really challenging our teams to not get defensive about things and seek first to understand before we say, well, this process, if they just follow the darn process, everything would work great and it's well. Let's look insular and let's not sort of jump to blame others versus you know thinking about what could be done differently. And and really you know thinking and this isn't just in healthcare supply chain but in all aspects of healthcare, the sort of people-centered design how do you make things work the way people think they should work, so that you know they're not having to fight against their intuitions around things?
Fred Crans :So yep, yeah, that's a great point. I was at a conference. I forgot which one it was. I don't know if it was the RM conference or whether it was an IDN summit, but Dr Thomas Fisher spoke there and I know you're familiar with him. He's a University of Chicago guy. He wrote a book called the Emergency and the book was sort of his mental and psychological experience through the pandemic. You know an inner city hospital where you have a whole bunch of cohorts that are susceptible to the pandemic. What was the experience like there for you during that time?
Eric Trich :Yeah, no, I think that's a very sort of powerful, you know that book is a powerful representation of some of the dynamics and an interesting lens on both sort of the personal and professional impact of the pandemic here in Chicago and in Hyde Park.
Eric Trich :You know, I think, yeah, it resonates.
Eric Trich :I mean, you know, you think about the challenges and in the time you know spent in it it does feel like, you know, when you look back at that, as you know, kind of wartimes type stuff where you're in the trenches really both from a supply chain operations and certainly, obviously, from a clinical team perspective.
Eric Trich :But, you know, give a ton of credit to my, you know, partners and leaders across my operations teams and and their willingness and ability to be right there, kind of scared in the front lines.
Eric Trich :I mean, I think about rounding in the ED and in the early days to make sure our teams were supported and, you know, to show that, hey, I'm, you know, from a leadership perspective, hey, we're willing to round in here and be scared too. So it's okay to be a little bit scared, but we've got to take care of our patients, we've got to continue to work in these settings, you know, being thoughtful and new in different ways about you know how to protect our operations and staff in a way that if certain groups got infected or got sick, how we would have a secondary group that you know wasn't sort of crossing paths with them, so it wouldn't wipe out a whole operation or a whole shift and the realizations early on of some of the challenges around you know we are going to run out of some of the things that we need and this is a new thing.
Eric Trich :I mean, we've dealt with backorders and shortages but this is a new thing where it's just not there and you're going to have to come up with new approaches and solutions. And you know, I certainly remember early on a meeting with some of our senior leadership, where you know I was sort of explaining that we are not going to have enough N95 masks and sort of feeling pretty panicked and even emotional at that, having to sort of go with that because we're used to solving problems and having the answers and not having to say like we don't have the answer, I'm not sure what to do. And really them picking me up and saying, eric, you know, we don't expect you to solve this, this is. You know, we've got to figure out a plan together and how we do this and how we make this work. And you know, remember a number of those moments through the, through the sort of depths of the pandemic and figuring it out and looking back, I mean, we, we were incredibly fortunate in some of our connections and the network of University of Chicago and its sort of global tentacles, to be able to get a lot of things that others might not be able to do, and have eyes on and feet on the ground in Asia and other things to help assess operations and legitimacy around things. And you know we were able to continue to provide PPE and other critical supplies in a way that you know some organizations across the country weren't able to do, and you know so there was a lot of good things that we we were able to do during that.
Eric Trich :But one of the one of the things looking back is it does open your eyes to what is possible. Um, and being at an academic medical center but also having community sites within our health system, it is interesting that different sites of care and different settings, interesting that different sites of care and different settings do things differently and have different expectations around what supplies and equipment are necessary. But you know, when faced with you know different barriers or challenges, what can be done to still preserve solid clinical care with a very different approach to what's needed from a supply and equipment perspective and how you can make things work. And so I think that opened my eyes to. You know how we can sort of challenge assumptions and because it's you know well, here's clinically how we do it. That doesn't necessarily mean that's the only way to do it and you know it did. It did open my eyes to some of that and open my eyes to some of the partners and in you know how we can look at those things and certainly from it, you know, opened our eyes in terms of something that we did see coming.
Eric Trich :You know, I think around Hurricane Maria, we were really focused on resilience coming out of that and the impact in puerto rico, but the um, you know multitude's different in terms of covid pandemic and I think it the good thing is it got the industry to start to really focus on this thing and you know government's involved in in illuminating some of the challenges within the supply chain and I am seeing progress. Um, you and we need to continue to stay focused on it and I think you know there are some knee-jerk reactions that maybe aren't the right answers long-term, but I think at least it's got the topic front and center in a way that it wasn't historically and in a sector where the supply chain should be a lot more robust than it has been, and I think that's been a good thing coming out of the pandemic.
Fred Crans :So do you think that your team is stronger and your organization is stronger because of the pandemic than it was beforehand?
Eric Trich :I would say yes, you know, both in that learning and you know I think we've been fortunate to have some fairly tenured leadership, both pre-pandemic and post-pandemic. And you know I can't be thankful enough for my leadership team in terms of their different domains of expertise that we were able to tap into during the pandemic and then having that sort of expertise and knowledge to come out of it and have lessons learned and make improvements based on some of you know what we went through. So I think you know we're stronger from it as a team and as an organization. And you know, I think you know, we've implemented things coming out of that and, and you know, learn from it and how we manage disruptions and how we manage uh safety stocks and and deploy things and in track disruptions. And then also you know some of our key suppliers in terms of how we manage forecasts and demands and critical item lists and things like that. That, I think, positions us both for normal disruption activity and future pandemic type situations as well.
Fred Crans :Interesting. So you're a center city hospital. You had an opportunity to go straight and stay at Trinity and be in Livonia, michigan, and not downtown Detroit, and you chose to be in downtown Chicago supply chain at Metro Health in Cleveland, which is the county hospital, the hospital that gets all the patients that nobody else wants, that the clinic and UH don't usually see. So what does being in a center city environment mean? What are your challenges and opportunities?
Eric Trich :Yeah, it is a different environment and I think you know part of the culture of UCM and you often hear when you talk to staff and providers here about. You know why they like to work here, why they want to work here. There often is an element around the communities that we serve. Our positioning being in the south Side of Chicago, you know it's an area that, particularly in a wonderful city with a lot of resources, you know has a lot of challenges socioeconomic challenges and you know having being able to have a positive impact on our patients and our broader community is is a through line that you hear from. You know a lot of our, our staff members and it's been something that really has kind of kept me engaged in terms of you know we research and sort of world-class things on that front, but also being able to apply that and have a direct impact to communities in need in the South Side and beyond. I think we're continuing to grow and expand but you know we are certainly a hub and an anchor institution here in the South Side in partnership with the university, and you know it's. It does bring a lot of differences, challenges and opportunities. I think you know in general, certainly right being in a city center, whether you're on a south side and a north side, and you know it brings a lot of resources. You can tap into strong resource pools, you know, and and allows us to resource pools, you know and allows us to, you know, have strong patient volumes and be able to recruit, you know, staff and recruit top physicians because they want to be in a place like Chicago. But you know it brings a lot of competition. We have a very, you know, highly competitive environment, a lot of great institutions that we compete with in our local market and that can create challenging dynamics in terms of retaining physicians, retaining staff.
Eric Trich :I would say you know we have challenges in terms of our payer mix. Like you said, you know we're we, you know we have some of the highest rates of Medicare, medicaid patient populations in the city. We have one of the busiest level one trauma centers in the city and sometimes the reimbursement with some of those patient populations and in government sponsored healthcare payers. It's hard to, you know, make ends meet on that payer mix, and so those are challenges that we face financially in terms of you know how do you offset things so that you're able to provide that kind of you know, innovative and advanced care and treatment for all patient populations, regardless of payer mix. So those are challenges that you know we have to figure out and face.
Eric Trich :There's other challenges I mentioned I'm taking over parking and public safety. When you're in a city center, parking is never easy. Parking is a challenge and that's a real thing for both patients and staff. And then when you talk about the public safety concerns of both patients and staff in a city center, those are real things too. If I've got to park and then walk across an area, if are real things too. If I've got to park and then walk across an area, you know. If I worked a night shift and I've got to walk to my parking garage, that's a real thing. We got to keep our staff feeling safe. We've got to keep our patients and visitors feeling safe but also, you know, not let that impact how we treat and care.
Eric Trich :And you know a lot of that goes into our mission in terms of not just caring for the acute injuries but trying to really extend our care into what caused that. You know, what are we doing? How are we, how are we as an organization and partnering with our universities, sort of invest in long-term solutions to some of this stuff and I mean really are doing some incredible things with violence recovery programs and you know efforts to really work both on the immediate injuries and you know treatment that's necessary for. You know patients that you know come into our organization, but also the surrounding. You know efforts and impacts and what does that mean to family members and loved ones and why did this happen and what can we do to sort of support and prevent these things in the future and de-escalate? And so there's a lot of dynamics going on. There's dynamics in city centers with what people think about. You know police presence and public safety and how to work together to to sort of provide safe environments. But recognizing those. Those histories are real, those challenges are real and out there and and you know being thoughtful about you know how we provide safe environments and and you know care for our patients.
Eric Trich :At the same time, I think you know it's also on a positive side, being in a city center, we have strong supplier distribution networks, logistic networks to tap into. I don't have to build all that on my own. I can tap into a lot of resources there. I can tap into, you know, those great competitors are also great partners. You know, I think back to the pandemic and had a number of sessions where I was on the phone with my you know peer organizations at Rush, northwestern UIC.
Eric Trich :You know North Shore, now Endeavor, advocate, aurora, and hey, you know what are you doing in this space and we were sharing openly and where we had extras to share and there was very little extras to go around, people did their best to make sure everyone had what they needed and share resources or point someone to a contact. And so you know, I really appreciate that about health care where, at the end of the day, we might be competitors but we don't want someone to not be able to care for a patient and do what we can to help each other out. So I think that's one of the benefits too of being in a city center environment with strong competition, strong health care network city center environment with you know, strong competition, strong healthcare network, yep, you know.
Fred Crans :I think that unless people have experienced it, you know where you are is an entirely new world for a lot of folks. I got, I had one surprise question, but I have to ask another question, now that you're in charge of parking did you get a reflective vest?
Eric Trich :You know it's one of these things of I'll probably slap one on. And you know it's one of these things of I'll probably slap one on. And you know I always try to. I always really try to walk with our frontline teams and understand things firsthand. And you know, certainly right, I have my personal experiences parking and getting around in our facilities. But you know you do have to understand things from different lenses, from the patient lens, from the staff lens. So you know it's one of those things happy to sort of put on the vest and go see it firsthand to understand how we can make things better, honestly. So Great.
Fred Crans :So here's my surprise question. I was looking at your LinkedIn page the other day and I believe I saw that at one time you were the CEO a chief executive officer of the green gym store. Okay, you start out at a young age and already you're a CEO. Why the heck would you want to go leave that high position to go into the healthcare supply chain?
Eric Trich :So that's a that's a good question and you know something I've left on my LinkedIn profile because I think it was an interesting experience. But I will tell you it's easy to be the CEO when you're a company of one and you know that was an experience. I got my master's in business and actually ended up tagging on some healthcare supply chain or, sorry, healthcare management sort of operations courses at the TLM. But I got my MBA from University of St Thomas in Minneapolis and they had a strong entrepreneurship program which I really appreciated. Those classes to think about what it means to run a business and all aspects of a business. And part of that effort and journey was to sort of start up a business plan for a company. And that Green Gym store was that iteration. So never really, you know, was a profitable venture and anything of major substance, but it was a you know the step in my career journey to sort of really pound the pavement, really talk to people, understand, try to meet a need, develop a business plan.
Eric Trich :And you know it got about as far as having a name and a logo and a website, not much more, but you know I keep it out there as sort of a hey, this is something that I did at one point and you know it was a cool experience. And I will say, you know, one of the aspects full circle there is is in sustainability. You know it's a key focus, you know, for us in supply chain and for me personally at UCM, and I lead some of our efforts around driving more sustainable practices here, and so you know, I think back to some of what I learned when I, you know, had the green gym store effort going.
Fred Crans :But you know, you always learn something, no matter what it is you're doing. My last question is what did I miss that you'd like to talk about?
Eric Trich :You know, gosh, there's a lot going on in this industry and in that UFC. I think the one thing that is, you know, being talked a lot about out there you know, potentially too ad nauseum is just kind of this you know, technology, landscape and AI and automation and I have a sense I mean, we're talking a lot about it internally, both, you know, across our senior leadership team and our supply chain leadership team, to say how can we lean in, how can we try things? This is here We've got to try to figure out ways to embrace it, adopt it, understand how it can help us and maybe, where it's a little bit riskier, and focus on problems to solve versus oh, here's something, technology to just go jump at and leverage unless we understand why we're using it. Jump at and leverage unless we understand why we're using it. But I do legitimately think that there will be some significant changes as a result of and it might not all be pure AI I think that moniker gets applied to a lot of things but automation and technology were faced with, you know, eroding margins, right, and I think that's reemerged as a major issue as some of the, you know, pandemic offset type payments have gone away and costs have elevated.
Eric Trich :Costs are up and maybe things like supplies and PPE aren't necessarily up, but service costs are up, equipment costs are up and those things.
Eric Trich :Those are real and so, as those, you know, water lines have risen and I'm not sure I see a path for them going back down. And margins, you know we continue to get pressure from the payers. We do need to think about how we leverage technologies to support growth and not have to always add costs to support those things. And I think there are some real exciting things in technology that you know can actually help us, but also in a way that doesn't feel like it's a painful technology. You know, oftentimes technology are things that our frontline staff struggle with. We roll things out that sound great and they fight with these technologies. But there are some real interesting things here that might actually prove to be both, you know, staff and provider satisfiers that can also help us sort of extend our you know, our most valuable resource, our labor, in ways that allow us to kind of do more in new ways. So I think that's going to be an exciting, exciting thing over the next three to five years.
Fred Crans :I think that's going to be an exciting thing over the next three to five years. Yeah, and I think your idea of a thoughtful approach to it is very important. I agree with you that terms are rolled out sort of without much thought to what they really mean. Everybody applies their own definition or their own concept to what it means, or their own concept of what it means and solving the problems of the future, combining technology and people and optimizing that, requires a careful thought and a lot of work among very many people at the organization. So I agree with you. Well, eric, it has been so great to have you on our podcast. I've been looking forward to it for a long time. I look forward to it so much that I scheduled it three different times and we finally picked one that worked and I'm glad to have had you here. Thanks so much.
Eric Trich :Yeah, no, happy to do it, fred, my pleasure.
Fred Crans :Okay, hey, take care, have a great day. See you later. Thank you, bye, all right.
