George Godfrey, Chief Supply Chain Officer, Corporate VP, Shared Services, Baptist Health South Florida
What are the most important attributes of successful supply chain teams today?
People are the most important component in creating and maintaining a successful supply chain. To be successful, team members need to be able to self-manage, and in order to do so, they need the accurate data and analytical tools to promote good decisions. Transparent and frequent communication as a team is another essential element. I have always believed that if you provide your team with the tools they need, they can and will do wonderful things.
What project or initiative are you looking forward to working on?
At Baptist Health South Florida, we are very fortunate to have developed a culture of continuous improvement and innovation within our team. For the past three years, we have designed business intelligence tools for all core functions, which have allowed us to deliver game-changing results – some of the best in the industry. We are now deploying a CRM solution (Salesforce) in an innovative way to be our communication engine. Additionally, we will be automating the communication loop related to match exceptions, concept to contract, item substitutions, value analysis and other transactions requiring iterative interactions between the supply chain team, our supply partners, and the departments we support. We want to win at communication every time, and we believe this tool will help us achieve that goal.
What changes brought about by the pandemic are here to stay in the supply chain?
Due to the pandemic, we have changed our perspective on supplier management, backorder management, item substitutions and market share agreements. We have found that having a single-source vendor and manufacturer in a specific geographic area can significantly affect patient care. The industry has been shifting toward market share agreements supporting a single-source strategy. But, given the lessons learned during the pandemic, we need to rethink that strategy.
When a supplier fails to deliver goods for any reason, be it their inability to source raw materials or profitably provide the goods at the contracted rate, they fail to deliver to multiple healthcare organizations tied to a market share commitment with that vendor. If they attempt to move to a new vendor to purchase the goods, they are penalized for not meeting their market share commitment, or worse; they cannot find enough product from alternate sources because the product is on allocation.
The success we realized in managing backorders and finding viable substitute products is attributable to gaining the trust of the clinicians and the support of senior management. At times, we had to make rather large financial decisions very quickly, which would not have been possible without the great teamwork throughout our organization. The relationships we have built with the clinicians and other departments within the organization during the pandemic have built the foundation for us to achieve new objectives more rapidly and effectively than before.
Who do you look up to for inspiration or mentorship?
Baptist Health South Florida has been blessed to have Brian Keeley as President and CEO for 53 years. Not only has he had the strategic vision to develop this organization into the largest and most-awarded healthcare provider in South Florida, but he also had the character to instill a foundation of integrity, compassion and charity. Baptist Health has grown from a single hospital to a healthcare system comprised of 12 hospitals and over 100 outpatient facilities, physician practices and institutes, serving over 1.5 million patients per year. Baptist Health has been named one of the “Best Companies to Work For” by Fortune Magazine 22 times, one of the “World’s Most Ethical Companies” by Ethisphere 12 times, and provides more the $400 million in charity care and community benefit per year. Mr. Keeley’s ability to grow the organization in the right way has inspired me and many others.
How do you keep your team motivated despite conflicts and obstacles?
Our team at Baptist Health is very self-motivated. The team has transformed from outlining obstacles to success to now figuring out where we can make improvements across the enterprise. They truly enjoy the challenge of being best-in-class in everything they do. As we continue to improve, we continue to find new and innovative ways to advance to higher performance levels. Everyone wants to be on a winning team.
What qualities are lacking among today’s leaders?
We are fortunate to have great leaders rising within our organization. The areas that we are focusing on to ensure their future success are their ability to develop and use analytical tools for decision-making, simplify and manage processes, and balance speed with precision.
What are your current goals?
- Continue to enhance, influence and feed the incredible continuous improvement culture we have built.
- Continue to identify processes that can leverage technology to automate tasks to allow our talented staff to do more with less.
- Automate our communication processes to eliminate labor-intensive interactions and instead focus on more complex, value-added tasks.
- Partner with the clinical staff to build more robust value analysis processes.
- Leverage technology such as machine learning to enable predictive analytics so that we may anticipate supply and demand shifts induced internally through usage or externally through market availability.