Strategic Management of the Health Care Supply Chain

A systems approach to understanding the needs of today’s healthcare supply chain

Strategic Management of the Healthcare Supply Chain offers a big-picture overview and a proven strategic framework for supply chain management in healthcare. It also addresses concrete strategies for risk management, partnerships, logistics, performance assessment, information technology, and beyond. Readers will gain a comprehensive understanding of the issues facing the healthcare supply chain and the opportunities that present themselves as we look toward the future. Written by a team of authors with both research expertise and practical experience in healthcare supply chain, this broad and impactful book teases out the complexities within the supply chain field and the healthcare ecosystem.

The healthcare industry is evolving rapidly, and the role of the supply chain is shifting in response. Institutions and practitioners are collaborating more closely than ever with supply chain leaders. This shift introduces new opportunities and challenges at the level of healthcare delivery. Additionally, the role of supply chain in safeguarding the social determinants of health--food, transportation, critical health-related products--is rapidly expanding, especially in historically underserved populations. This revised edition takes a holistic approach to the needs of people and organizations, yielding strategies that will improve both economic and health outcomes.

• Gain the understanding you need to work toward building a mature supply chain organization
• Develop perspective on how the needs of the healthcare supply chain are shifting in the modern era
• Holistically assess supply chain performance and improve clinical, financial, and operational outcomes
• Identify opportunities to generate value, improve alliances, and cut costs

This book will be of interest to graduate students in the health sector and supply chain programs, as well as working clinicians, health sector managers, and supply chain leaders. Policymakers looking to create a more resilient healthcare supply chain in the wake of COVID-19 will also find valuable insight inside.

Eugene Schneller, Ph.D., Eugene Schneller earned his Ph.D. at New York University (Sociology). He was awarded an honorary Physician Associate (PA) degree from Duke University and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the A.T. Still University. He has held faculty and research scholar positions at Duke University, Union College (New York) and Columbia University. His consulting and research focus on health care policy, best practice adoption, supply chain purchasing strategy design and governance, human resource development and supply chain integration. He is a former director at Vomaris and the Barrow Neurological Institute and has served on advisory boards for both device manufacturers and information technology companies. He was on the Expert Advisory Council for SCAN health and serves in an advisory capacity to W. L. Gore Associates. He was Principal Investigator for the Department of Defense efforts to integrate the medical supply chains for the three services. He is the former Chair of the Board of the Association of University Programs in Health Administration and the former Western Network for Health Care Management. He is co-founder of Healthcare Supply Chain Excellence and Principal at Health Care Sector Advances. In 2022 he was appointed as Co-Director for the design and management of the Resilience Initiative at the W.P. Carey School of Business. He is a frequent speaker at academic and corporate conferences and has facilitated strategic planning retreats, focus groups and scenario planning exercises for medical device companies, group purchasing organizations and universities.

Jim Eckler, B. Math, MS, CMS, ICD.D, is a graduate in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo and in Management Science from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a past chair of the Supply Chain and Logistics Association of Canada. As well, he is a Certified Management Consultant (CMC). Over the past 45 years he has authored numerous articles and regularly speaks on a broad range of supply chain topics. Professionally, Jim provides advisory services in the supply chain management field delivering practical strategic and operational advice to his clients. He focuses exclusively on supply chain management, outsourcing, business strategy, corporate governance, and operations. He has a particular specialty in the healthcare field, advising hospital systems and other healthcare organizations towards the achievement of supply chain excellence. To support this focus, Jim co-founded Healthcare Supply Chain Excellence (www.hscxi.com), a consulting firm focused on strategy, cost management, improved patient outcomes, and quality improvement, all driven to improve supply chain management performance. He is also the cofounder of Physicians for Supply Chain Excellence, an organization to help physician leaders gain clinical alignment on supply chain matters, particularly towards rationalizing high-cost physician preference items. For 18 years Jim held senior executive roles in operating companies, including Health Shared Services BC, a provider of shared services for the healthcare system across British Columbia, and as President and CEO of SCI Group Inc., a leading supply chain management outsourcing services company, providing logistics services for major technology, healthcare, and retail companies such as Xerox, Bell Canada, Amazon, Wal-Mart, Siemens, and Lowes. In addition to operational roles, Jim has served on six Boards with roles including Chair, executive committees, finance, and pensions. He also holds the ICD.D designation from the Institute of Corporate Directors. Prior to his senior executive positions, Jim was a supply chain management consultant for 18 years with Booz Allen and KPMG.
Karen Conway, MSc, CMRP, CLSSGB, trained as a healthcare delivery scientist, Karen Conway applies extensive knowledge of supply chain operations and systems thinking to align processes and data across the healthcare ecosystem to generate evidence on what improves the health of people and populations and the performance of organizations upon which an effective healthcare system depends. As Vice President, Healthcare Value for Global Healthcare Exchange (GHX), Conway works with the majority of hospitals and healthcare systems in the U.S. (as well as a large percentage in Canada and Western Europe) and the suppliers from which they purchasethe majority of their medical products. Conway served as national chair of AHRMM, the supply chain association for the American Hospital Association and is currently board secretary for Strategic Marketplace Initiative (SMI) and a member of the GS1 Global Healthcare Leadership Team and the healthcare advisory board for CAPS Research. Conway co-wrote a best-selling book on global leadership, Leading from the Edge, and was a contributing author to the Springer publication, eBusiness in Healthcare. Her monthly column on the supply chain and value-based healthcare has been one of the most well read in Healthcare Purchasing News for more than a decade. She holds a masters in the Science of Healthcare Delivery from Arizona State University and a bachelor’s degree from The Colorado College. Yousef Abdulsalam, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Operations & Supply Chain Management at Kuwait University’s College of Business Administration. He earned his Ph.D. in Supply Chain Management from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University under the supervision of Professor Gene Schneller. His academic research relates to supply management in the health sector, including supply chain integration, purchasing alliances, and the physicians’ influence on supplier selection. The research has been published in both Supply Chain Management journals (Journal of Business Logistics, Journal of Operations Management) and Health Care Management journals (Health Care Management Review, Medical Care Research & Review). He teaches undergraduate courses in supply chain management, business analytics, and operations research. Prior to his academic career, Yousef was a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) working at Ernst & Young’s Advisory Services division in the Information Technology, Project Management, and Business Process Reengineering domains.