Jennifer Carlson, Sr. Director of Strategic Sourcing, Sutter Health
Editor’s note: The following interview originally appeared in The Journal of Healthcare Contracting, a sister publication of Repertoire Magazine.
Please tell us about your role/responsibilities within your organization.
As the Sr. Director of Strategic Sourcing at Sutter Health, my team of 90 employees is responsible for non-labor expense management initiatives, product and service variation reduction, contracting for goods and services, purchasing, and capital sourcing.
In what ways has the market changed that makes supply chain more important to hospitals and health systems?
Supply chain teams were always valuable, but often went unnoticed or underappreciated until disruptions in available supply began to wreak havoc on the world a few years ago. We have had to adapt to a regular stream of back ordered and discontinued products and to find solutions that make sense clinically, financially, and hopefully can be implemented without too much disruption to care teams. Additionally, increased financial pressure has shifted more attention to supply chains to deliver cost reductions and control the rate of inflation through creative negotiating and more standardization of products and processes.
What are some of the biggest challenges facing supply chain departments today?
From my perspective it is data. Other industries have had data standards like UPCs since the 1970s. In healthcare, we are so far behind on data standards. Even the EMR data we use to review physician utilization of medical devices isn’t standard from one hospital to the next. Although we have access to tons of data, it is often inaccurate or incomplete. It’s challenging to analyze and interpret data sets when you have to spend so much time normalizing them first.
When you hear words like diversity and equity in the workplace, what does that mean to you? How can prioritizing these values contribute to the success of an organization?
I think of this in two ways:
First, diversity in our work force adds varied experiences and perspectives, which I believe translate into creative problem solving, better decision making, and employee retention. During my time in healthcare, I have reported to a number of strong female leaders, and I am grateful to have had them as role models. It was empowering to see other women succeed, and it helped me have confidence that I could move into management roles. Healthcare has a high rate of female leaders compared to other industries, but women are still underrepresented in top leadership positions. Supply Chain was also historically very male dominated, and it is exciting to see more women, especially in top roles, over the last several years. Employees can really benefit from seeing themselves represented in the leadership roles of their organization. For some, seeing leaders they can identify with based on background, culture, ethnicity, gender, etc. can be very motivating and inspirational.
Second, when I started in Supply Chain Management, supplier diversity wasn’t widely acknowledged outside of government agencies. Now it’s become a global phenomenon. Supplier diversity can create a positive economic impact in our local communities by enabling job creation and capacity expansion, increase competition by widening the supplier pool, encourage innovation and entrepreneurship, and increase supply chain resiliency with more sourcing options. My team is actively working on building out a robust supplier diversity plan to grow our spend and measure the impact in the communities we serve. I have been spending time recently connecting with peers, resources, and various councils to learn best practices that my team can adopt rather than reinventing the wheel. I am also currently pursuing ISM’s Certified Professional in Supplier Diversity to strengthen my own understanding of the concepts.
What is a recent project or initiative you’ve been excited to work on?
When I came to Sutter there was no established Value Analysis structure at the system level; however, a few hospitals were running local product approval committees that Supply Chain was supporting. With executive leadership support and partnership with the clinical service lines, we implemented CTAC, or the Clinical Technology Assessment Council, which has become a centralized Value Analysis governance structure. The subcommittees are service line focused and made up of physicians who review and make approval recommendations for all new medical devices requested in our system. The physician chair from each subcommittee also sits on the governance committee, along with other clinical and non-clinical leaders, where final decisions are made to approve all new devices. My team facilitates by processing all requests, prepping agendas and providing cost, revenue, and contractual impacts. We developed a charter that defines everything from decision criteria to attendance expectations. We have excellent engagement from physicians and I am really proud of how successful this endeavor has been though we continuously look for ways to improve our processes.
How do you focus on your growth as a leader?
As they say, “knowledge is power,” and although I have been in healthcare for 25+ years, I am always learning something new and it’s critical to my growth. Whether it is through formal education courses or more informal avenues like listening to a podcast on healthcare reform, there are so many ways we can grow by acquiring information and applying it to the work we do.
One my new favorites is LinkedIn Learning. There is a huge library of topics to choose from, including a lot of supply chain focused content that I am very excited about for me and my team.
The other thing I often think about is a quote from the movie “A League of their Own” when Tom Hanks says “It’s supposed to be hard. If it were easy, everyone would do it.” I often prefer to tackle the hard stuff. Challenges present opportunities for growth and supply chains have had unprecedented challenges. Even projects that fail have something to teach us by reflecting on what we could have done differently or analyzing data points that we may need to factor into the next project, for example. It’s important to fail quickly and move on. The pandemic has taught us that we have to be bold, adaptable, and creative; all things I associate with growth.