Taking The Supply Chain Pulse
St. Onge’s Healthcare Hall of Famer and industry icon, Fred Crans, chats with leaders from all areas of healthcare to discuss the issues of today's- threats, challenges and emerging trends and technologies in a lighthearted and engaging manner.
ENGINEERING A BETTER HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
We provide comprehensive planning and design services to develop world-class facilities and highly effective support services operations. Our capabilities in hospital supply chain consulting include applied industrial engineering, lean methodologies, systems thinking, and operations research to enable improved patient care and staff satisfaction. We are proud to have worked with over 100 hospitals, including 18 of the top 22 in the US, utilizing diverse design strategies, post-construction implementation, and change management.
Taking The Supply Chain Pulse
Celebrating Emerging Leaders in Healthcare Supply Chain Management
Could mentorship be the game-changer in your career? Join us as we dive into the lives of Ryan Burke and Rachel Anderson, two rising stars in the healthcare supply chain industry. Rachel, the Corporate Director of Supply Chain at Baptist Health, and Ryan, overseeing strategic sourcing in Rochester, share how their career paths were shaped by invaluable mentorship and networking opportunities. Hear about their active roles in ARM's Young Professionals Group (YPAC) and discover how initiatives like Mentor Match and Lunch with the Boss are bridging the gap for future leaders.
Hello again everybody. This is Fred Kranz from St Onge coming to you with another podcast, taking the Supply Chain Pulse. Once again today, I'm coming from our remote studios in Galena, illinois. We're going to be talking to Ryan Burke and Rachel Anderson, and we have an unscheduled guest in the room named Remy, who is my friend's dog, who may or may not be barking while this is going on. So we'll try to make the best of it. So let's see how it goes. How's it going, folks? How are you guys doing today?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. How about you, Fred?
Speaker 1:I'm doing great Just another day in the life, right? So today we have with us two Bellwether League future famers, the leaders of today and tomorrow, the next generation of supply chain leaders, and I wanted to talk with the young folks out there and see what challenges they face that are different than ours there, and see what challenges they face that are different than ours, how they're preparing themselves for their career and take it from there and see if we can come up with some insights that will help see where supply chain is going and see the folks that are going to get us there. So, whoever wants to start out first, why don't you tell us about yourselves and your career, where you are today, what your positions are, what your roles are, and then we can get started from there? Who wants to go first? Ladies first, I think Ryan said. Ryan said on here ladies first and after. Rachel tells you everything you need to know about her. I'll give you the two seconds that's remaining to answer the question.
Speaker 3:That's right. Thanks, Brad.
Speaker 2:Perfect. Thank you, southern gentleman. Down here in Alabama, I'm Rachel Anderson. I'm the corporate director of supply chain for Baptist Health. We are in Montgomery, alabama, and I have been with Baptist for 13 years now. I actually started out as an intern. I graduated from Auburn University, did a degree in supply chain management and then health administration. So I do a little bit of everything now in my role as corporate director, from inventory, distribution, purchasing contracts, analytics and value analysis. So, ryan, I'll turn it over to you.
Speaker 3:Thanks, rachel Appreciate that. And Fred, thank you for having us on the podcast this afternoon. We're excited to share our stories and talk with you. I know we've been trying to get this scheduled for a few months now and I'm glad we're able to finally have a conversation and hopefully have some valuable insights for your listeners.
Speaker 3:So a little bit about me. Similar to Rachel, I started out my healthcare supply chain career as an intern, although I started out my studies a little differently. I actually went to school to be a physician assistant and then during the first few semesters of my studies I realized that I really didn't like clinical care and all the blood and guts and everything that went along with that. But I still had a deep passion for health care and I wanted to be involved in health care somehow. So I began doing some research and landed on some operations and health care classes and I started taking those. I actually ended up graduating with a degree in health administration and my first internship, interestingly enough, was in a purchasing department at a big IDN up here in Rochester, new York. I ended up after my internship getting hired as a buyer and worked my way up.
Speaker 3:I spent the first decade of my career at Rochester Regional Health in the supply chain there. The last role I had there was the director of supply chain before I moved to the GPO side of the house where I now work for a regional GPO based in Rochester, new York. I've been here for about five and a half years where I run the strategic sourcing and contracting department and responsible for all contract negotiations and supplier relationships for the GPO and our participating members. I've known Rachel for what? Six, seven years now? We've been participating in ARM together and we've been members of the YPAC although we won't admit we're going to be rolling off soon due to age, but we've collaborated on things before, so happy to be joining you together, fred.
Speaker 1:Rolling off due to age I can't believe that. I think I have underwear older than you guys, so you guys are both active in RM's Young Professionals Group, so tell us about it and what its goals are.
Speaker 2:So the goals are to connect, advise, represent and engage, and that's our four pillars, which actually stands for the acronym CARE. And we have a couple of exciting things we're working on for this year's conference, one of which is Mentor Match and the power of mentoring, connecting and having that engagement both at the starting out, at the entry-level part of your career, and at the middle and the upper-level part of your careers as well. So we're really excited to see the traction that the group has got going and to turn it over, as Ryan said, since we will be rolling off to the next leaders that will be taking the YPAC forward.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll tack on there, Fred. You know Rachel and I have been members of the YPAC since the inaugural class in 2019. And you know we obviously went through COVID like everyone else, so we had some stops and starts in there with the advisory council, but we've definitely had some success stories along the way. We've created a webinar series that airs quarterly. That's all driven through ARM by YPAC members. We've participated in the ARM National Conference. We've had panel discussions. We've had a very. Our most popular event was what was called Lunch with the Boss, which put senior supply chain leaders with young professionals and gave them the opportunity to network in a very casual lunch environment. So it was kind of like a speed dating environment where you could go from chief supply chain officer to VP of supply chain and work your way through the room. So it really gave young professionals the opportunity to you know to engage with and ask questions of senior supply chain leaders.
Speaker 1:you know, at that event, okay, um, you know I was.
Speaker 1:I was thinking about the event we were at last year at arm and, uh, you, you guys, uh, did a uh presentation and there were in the room the young folks that are from ypac and a bunch of us older folk, um, and it was really interesting to see the dynamic. I think I would like to have been sitting where you were to be, looking out at us and seeing our faces as we were listening to the conversation that ensued in that mixed group, and the thing that came across to me was, I think, at any given time in any workplace right now, you're going to encounter about five generations of people. There's still some of I was a pre-boomer by a few months then there are the boomers, then there's Gen X, and then there's the millennials and then there's whatever the next, the most recent generation is, and as a leader, you have to be able to understand the way the different generations view the world and workplace and sort of shape your approach to them accordingly. How have you been able to go about learning how to do that?
Speaker 3:Well, I can jump in here first, rachel. I mean, I'll say that Rachel and I identify as millennials, so we are not Gen Z, so we're actually learning a lot from professionals that are coming into the workplace. You know, now is something that you know. It's inspiring for us because you know it gives us the opportunity to talk with those pre-boomers or those boomers. Get that experience in the position we're in now. You know, having 15 years of our career or so in, we've learned some stuff not everything, but it really gives us the unique opportunity to take some of the stuff that we have learned, some of the stuff we continue to learn, and really empower and educate, if you will, that that next generation that's coming into the workforce. So we're in a unique position where we can not only be mentees but also mentors. So it's really an exciting time for us.
Speaker 2:It's really nice. We get to be a blend of both. I think one of the best things I learned from my mentor, from my VP, when I first started out was email etiquette right, the power of a subject line and making sure that the emails that you're trading on an email thread actually matches the subject line, which was something that you know we can often get on top off topic, and so I always pay close attention to the way that I craft emails and I learned how to how to really word those. And then, with the younger generation, something that I'm teaching for them is that they can often be phone avoidance, and so the power of you know, not being afraid to pick up the phone rather than exchange emails, especially when things get lost in translation and the tone cannot tend to come across correctly in an email.
Speaker 2:So I think we've got, you know, the benefit of our, you know, 13 to 15 years of experience and we're helping to shape the next generation and kind of, and they're teaching us, like Ryan said, because they have the tools and the technology and we're helping to shape the next generation and kind of, and they're teaching us, like Ryan said, because they have the tools and the technology and they're a little bit quicker than we were, and I'm so glad.
Speaker 3:I'm so glad. I'm so glad Rachel brought up that email example because in early on in my career I'd spend an hour writing one email, trying to make it a perfectly worded and crafted before I'd send it off to a group of executives. And, looking back, if I just picked up the phone or if I just walked into to meet with someone in person, I probably could have saved a lot of time and energy and anxiety around an email. Now getting 300, 400 plus emails a day you know, now getting 300, 400 plus emails a day there's no time to, you know, to spend hours on an email and it's much easier just to pick up a phone or send a text or send a, you know, a Teams communication or just, you know, good old fashioned walk into someone's office and have a conversation. So I'm glad she used that as the example. As the example.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and one of the things about emails that I've always thought was, uh, um, something to be aware of is I can't tell you the number of times that people have come up to me and said have you seen the tone of this email?
Speaker 1:And, um, I'm going, you know, let's, let's step back here a second. An email is just black type on a white background. There's no tone there. It's neutral. The tone is being applied. Tone is being applied by you. So, if you can get clarification, if you are concerned or unsure about what the quote tone is, I think your approach about having a face-to-face conversation is the best way to clarify things. That's for sure. To clarify things. That's for sure, absolutely. So. You guys have both had mentors and models that were old timers, who were they and what did you learn from them?
Speaker 3:I like that word, old timer, fred. I'll go first on this one. I've been very fortunate to have a handful of mentors along the way, kind of. The one that sticks out in my mind is the first mentor that I had, vp of supply chain, had very much an open door policy and was really an engineering background. He was very heavily involved with the supply chain at NASA and so kind of some of the learnings he brought in from the manufacturing supply chain he brought into healthcare. And why I look back fondly on that relationship, that mentor relationship, is because he really exposed me to everything early.
Speaker 3:So very early on in my internship and in the first year of my career I was attending executive level meetings that I had no business being at. I was at capital meetings. He was putting me in front of as many people as possible as often as possible, putting me in front of you know as many people as possible as often as possible, and I would take notebook you know notebooks full of notes at those meetings and it really was invaluable to get that exposure and just be included and for him to think of me and to include me. And it's something that I try and do with the folks that you know. See me, as you know, as their mentor. I try and let them try and troubleshoot and problem solve, give them a scenario, let them work through it. And it's just now. It's really rewarding to be able to do that. But you know, early in my career I'm super thankful that I had that opportunity to have a mentor that was that engaging.
Speaker 2:And, like Brian, I had a similar exposure my VP for supply chain, highly engaged me from my internship when I started from Auburn Even on.
Speaker 2:One of the things he asked me to do when I first started was to redesign the hospital's value analysis program. Me to do when I first started was to redesign the hospital's value analysis program and then, little did I know. He brought me in to run the program and help make sure everything that I had written in our policy and procedure was actually laid out in real time. So that was a big responsibility for me and it was something that I got to jump straight into and have ownership in. But also he really said you know, rachel, I think you can go far in this for your career.
Speaker 2:My first job offer was not necessarily the strongest from a pay standpoint by Baptist, but he said you know, stick with me, put the time and the energy and the work in and I'll make sure you continue to get those opportunities to move up if you put the work and the time in. And that's so important now for our next generation to understand because there is such an environment of instant gratification, everybody wants what they want now and they want it quickly. So I do remind our new grads and our new hires when they come in that are younger, because I say expect to put in two to three years of work and it will be so valuable for you in the long run for this, if this is your passion and healthcare is where you want to be. And so he did. You know, he gave me an opportunity every two to three years to promote and to promote from within, and so that's one of the reasons why 13 years later, I'm still here. So I have a lot to thank to him as my mentor.
Speaker 1:So when I asked you who your mentors were, I was hoping that you would name them, because I think I know yours. Yours was Stan Swedberg, right, rachel?
Speaker 2:That's right, yes, sir.
Speaker 1:And Stan was a good friend of mine. He was a friend of everybody's. He was a really fine human being. I think one of the parts about being a mentor, I think, is that you got to be a decent person, to be willing to invest yourself in helping and leading other folks, and Stan was certainly that kind of that person. He's a great guy. You were very fortunate to have been sort of broken into the business with Stan. How about who? What was the name of yours? Ryan?
Speaker 3:into the business with Stan. How about who? What was the name of yours, ryan? My mentor was Brian Allsford, who retired as VP of supply chain at Rochester Regional. Before that, in healthcare, he was at Presbyterian in New York City and then, as I mentioned, he was outside of healthcare in the manufacturing and kind of aeronautics space.
Speaker 1:Yep, always, always, name them by names, because that's the best way to honor them. Seriously, stan was one of those guys that, in my opinion, is a guy who would be a, a person that would be a candidate for the bellwether league, and, and so many of the older folks worked their whole careers and if they're not at the Cleveland Clinic or the Mayo Clinic or someplace that's got a gigantic name, they're only known to the folks around them. So if you get a chance to raise those names up, that's a good thing to do. But, given that, how does your current situation differ from what people said? Things were like back in the day.
Speaker 3:I'll just answer quickly here before turning over to Rachel. I mean, I think our predecessors have worked so hard to elevate the supply chain to where it is now. You know it used to be materials management in the basement next to the morgue. You know it used to be materials management in the basement next to the morgue and now it's supply chain, with several progressive organizations appointing chief supply chain officers. It looks more like our industry partners.
Speaker 3:It's our job now, as emerging and upcoming health care supply chain leaders and executives, to kind of continue that momentum, take that baton, finish that race. And, quite frankly, the visibility in the supply chain, not only in healthcare but also outside of healthcare, is more than it's ever been. A lot of that is certainly because of COVID, but that's also because of rising costs, and that's, I think, a good problem for Rachel and I to have is for the spotlight to be on and for the pressure to be on. I think it's going to cause us to elevate our game, to develop teams around us that are strong and really keep moving this thing forward.
Speaker 2:We have an opportunity now, I think, to seize the spotlight, like Brian said, and we really have gone from the basement to the boardroom right, we have a seat at the table and COVID-19 helped highlight the importance of our roles but also how those are ever-changing and moving forward and we have to be able to adapt and move quickly, especially with all of the new technology, the new solutions that are coming out AI, robotics, machine learning, all of these things and it's a really exciting time and I see it as an opportunity rather than a challenge. Everyone says you know, global supply chain is still broken, but those are opportunities for us to really assess our processes and figure out some things that weren't working and how do we change those moving forward. So I'm excited.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you know. The fact that you're excited is a good thing, because I don't think times are going to get any easier as we go forward. They're going to get more complicated and more difficult and more challenging. So, that being said, what skill sets do the next gen leaders like yourselves, who are formally educated in supply chain often now which is something that none of us were now, which is something that none of us were Almost all of us were either came from the military or were probably self-educated folks who worked our way up from a position in either purchasing or, in my case, sterile processing, without a formal supply chain training. What skill sets do the next generation leaders need that are different from the ones that we've had in the past?
Speaker 2:I think they are very technology focused and that's something that we have to capitalize on. But it's also something that makes the work Ryan and I are doing with the YPAC so important, because it's raising awareness about healthcare supply chain as a career field, and we want to make it a destination career field. So we're still having supply chain graduates come out that are going into manufacturing and big industry and big tech jobs because they don't know, perhaps, that healthcare supply chain is a field that they can go into and we've got to do better at recruiting those individuals to come here. Our healthcare supply chain is still pretty fragmented and broken. A lot of our systems have multiple interfaces. They don't connect, they don't talk to one another.
Speaker 2:We're still in the 1980s when it comes to some of our inventory processes. We haven't caught up with manufacturing and industry, and so we've really got to pave the ground at work, I think, moving forward, because we're going to have those baby boomers retiring and we have individuals at our age, ryan and I, who have been in the industry now for 10 to 12 years. They're leaving the hospital side and they're going to go work for vendors, they're working for consultants, they're doing hybrid, remote options, travel, and so we're losing some of that experience. So that's something we've got to focus on, ryan. What about you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'll briefly echo what Rachel said around technology. I mean, we grew up with computers and had cell phones introduced to us, probably when we were in high school, but smartphones and tablets are just common. I mean my six-year-old the other day asked me when she can get an iPad, and my wife and I disagree on when that is, but that's just, that's the norm now is technology and making sure that the technology that we're using in our health systems is sufficient and works and makes sense and isn't clunky like it can be now. And also I think that, fred your point about supply chain schools and you know the difference between growing up in the supply chain versus having a strong supply chain education, like Rachel and others do. I think that supply chain expertise and subject matter expertise is going to be even more critical, moving forward and not just kind of a jack-of-all-trades approach. We're really going to need, you know true supply chain experts within the healthcare supply chain in the future.
Speaker 1:Yep. So between you and your wife, which one said we should get the iPad today and which one said you should wait till she's 12 years old?
Speaker 3:uh 12. 12 is a. Is the under on that one, fred I was. I was in the teenage years before she gets that.
Speaker 1:So there you go. I would have thought that you, being the the tech dude, would be the one to say, oh, we should go get one right now, and you would. You would, uh, be doing, I would, I would, I would miss that one completely. So I'm about to graduate from, let's see, university of Tennessee, where my supply chain instructor was Dr Randy Bradley, a graduate from Auburn University, and we've had people coming in all throughout my senior year and stuff showing us various jobs out there, and every job in industry is about uh, 2x times what health care is paying. So if you were a recruiter for health care, how would you get me to want to invest my time in a job that's going to be thankless, uh, and not as financially rewarding as any of the other jobs? Who wants to take that question?
Speaker 2:That's a tall order, fred, but I am very passionate about what I do and I believe in the power of understanding that every decision we make drives back to patient care. Just because we're not a frontline worker doesn't mean that what we do doesn't directly drive that patient care. So you have to have that patient forward focus. But then too, I would say there's such a need for the work that we do and there's less positions available, but there's the opportunity to move up quickly if you put the time in, so you might be able to make a bigger jump to the next position in your career than you would if you go somewhere else where there's a lot more opportunities to just jump from smaller jumps, one at a time. So that's definitely something I've seen and it's just. Are you willing to put in the time and the effort?
Speaker 3:The other thing I'll tack on there is that the healthcare supply chain is very broad. So if we're only focused on the provider side, that is going to be a little more narrow. But if we think about the suppliers, consultants, gpos, you know other industry partners that are involved within that healthcare supply chain, you know it's likely that a student can start maybe in consulting and then eventually end up on the provider side, or even starting with a supplier and then coming back to the provider side. So my position has been, as long as we always keep them in the healthcare ecosystem, they could eventually back, you know, and end up supporting a provider organization and, quite frankly, if they're within those other you know parts of the healthcare supply chain they are supporting the patient as well, just in a different capacity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we learned during COVID, I mean, the power of partnership, the power of relationship. You know, we were all reminded of that and, as Ryan said, as a part of the larger healthcare ecosystem, we all need each other and we all play a part in what we do, and so that's very important as well to think about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the one thing I'm sure you've noticed in your 12 to 15 years experience is that healthcare is a lifetime commitment. We have a lot of us who come in and never leave, even though the pay is not as good as other folks. It's a mission-driven thing and you develop friendships and relationships that last 20, 30, 40, 50 years when you're in this business. So healthcare delivery and technology is rapidly changing. Technology is rapidly changing. You got robotics, ai and the transition from an acute care focus to pushing the care delivery out to the home. How have these changes affected your organizations?
Speaker 2:I think for now it's limited, but all of those things we're going to be facing, especially in Alabama when we look at rural care, especially the home care, but those are still big ideas that are a few years off for us. We're still trying to fix a lot of the basics, to be honest, and those are things that you know, we have to work through on a daily basis, but the commitment is there, ryan. What about you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think a lot of this is still a little bit in the future, although there are some progressive organizations that are kind of on the cutting edge of some of this adoption. You know, at our organization we're using AI mostly for administrative functions scheduling of meetings and, you know, helping draft emails and project charters and things like that. So very limited adoption at this point. But I do see that you know, technology has increased so dramatically. I mean, just, you know, look at the iPhone that we're all using. It hasn't been around that long in the grand scheme of things. So I think the robotics and AI, machine learning et cetera is all going to accelerate and we just have to. We have to be smart about what we're buying, when we're buying it, what we're using, and, you know, really help as supply chain professionals, help our organizations bring in the right products and make the right help, support the team and you know right products and help support the team in making the right buy decisions for these technologies.
Speaker 1:Okay, so are you ready for the next big disruption? That's how we measure our career in supply chain from one disruption to the next. And if you are ready, what do you think that disruption will be?
Speaker 3:I think we're all sick of talking about pandemics and COVID. I'm sure there will be one within our career, although I feel like we're at least somewhat prepared to manage that next big disruption. We've obviously seen a few there's they're always in the news a few big ones recently. I still believe there's going to be a sizable one that's going to have really a ripple effect throughout the healthcare delivery system. It, you know, impacting patient care, delaying surgeries, things like that, and it's not going to be really at the local level, it's going to be kind of at the national level. Again, I hope I don't have to bet on that, but it seems like that would be really the biggest threat from a you know next big disruption, at least from my perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cybersecurity is definitely something that we are focusing on within Baptist as well. We have a lot of emails that go out and we kind of make sure that everyone's paying attention to where those emails come from and we do some testing from security. And then we've also looked at things like locking down USB access to our computers, so making sure that data can't be taken out of the system or put back in right in a safe manner, and so those small things are at least how we've gotten started in the hopes of preventing a massive cyber attack within the organization.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds like you've given a lot of thought to what might happen and, regardless of what does happen, we've always been able to soldier through whatever challenges have come up, and I'm sure that, given the fact that we have folks like you guys, with different and better skill sets than we had, I'm sure we'll make it. So what did I forget to ask about that you guys would like to talk about?
Speaker 3:And well, fred, you said it well at the end of the day, we're the best firefighters, right? So we'll definitely be prepared for that. No, nothing from me. I just wanted to thank you, fred. I want to thank St Ange for putting on this podcast, appreciate it, and I didn't hear the dog bark once, so I think it was a good show. I didn't either.
Speaker 1:Well, it's good that you guys didn't, but I don't know if the microphone picked it up, so what I will say is this I want to thank Ryan and Rachel and my co-interviewer Remy, who I can hear barking right now, for helping make this possible. And, if nothing else, people will know that every one of these podcasts is not a truly professionally produced event but a down-home work from the heart, and it's so good to have you folks here. I'm excited to be working with you guys in the Bellwether League For you folks that are out there. Both Rachel and Ryan serve key roles in the Bellwether League and they're carrying a lot of water and doing a lot of stuff to promote the future of the industry, and I couldn't be happier.
Speaker 1:Someone asked me yesterday how come I had not been a future famer and I told them it was because those awards didn't exist yet. But being a regular Bellwether like I am, it's a lot easier because you get these, this award, at the stage of your career when nothing more is expected from you. The real tough part is being a future famer, because people got their eyes on you for the rest of your life. So I wish you guys the best of luck. I know you're going to do well and uh, thanks so much for taking time out to talk with us. You've really shown people out there how proud we should be of the young folks that are the new leaders, and I'm glad to know you guys and have you as colleagues and friends. So take care, we are glad to have you on the meeting, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thanks.
Speaker 1:Brad, take care Bye.
