April 21, 2026- Women in Sourcing for Health Systems (WISH) kicked off its first webinar on April 7 with Cecile Hozouri, Corporate Vice President of Supply Chain at Scripps Health. She shared insights on her career journey, leadership, and the future of supply chain in healthcare. Cecile is the Corporate Vice President of Supply Chain at Scripps Health in San Diego — a massive health system with 5 hospitals, over 30 clinics, 17,000 employees, and 3,000+ physicians. She’s been at Scripps for about 20 years, and the way she talks about her work? You can feel how much she genuinely loves it. Our host for the conversation was Maria Hames, partner at Healthcare Links, who has known Cecile for years and brought such a great energy to the whole discussion.
She started as a pharmacy tech in high school
Cecile didn’t come from a traditional business or supply chain background. She got her pharmacy tech certification while still in high school in Minnesota, and worked her way through college doing exactly that — working in hospital pharmacies, trauma centers, outpatient settings. She paid her own way through school. That foundation in the actual clinical world gave her something a lot of supply chain leaders don’t have: a deep understanding of what it feels like on the front lines of patient care.
“Pharmacy really gave me the feel of healthcare. It started my career early, when I was young.”
From there, a consulting firm tapped her on the shoulder when she quickly picked up a new electronic system they were implementing. That pivot into consulting — and eventually into Scripps as an independent contractor — is what led her to where she is today. She never planned a straight path. She just kept saying yes to the next interesting thing.
Supply chain is not just about saving money anymore
This was a big one for me, because I think a lot of people outside the industry assume supply chain is just about buying things cheaper. Cecile made it clear that’s no longer the whole picture.
At Scripps, they’re now focused on something called evidence-based purchasing — which basically means working with doctors and surgeons to figure out whether expensive products are actually necessary for certain procedures, based on real clinical evidence. Think high-cost surgical items like wound closure devices or skin substitutes. Instead of just negotiating a better price, they’re asking: does this patient even need this product for this specific case?
“The easy wins are gone. We’re looking at what’s actually needed, and using evidence to back it up.”
It’s a totally different approach, and it requires deep collaboration between supply chain teams and the clinical side — doctors, surgeons, service lines. That’s a relationship that takes time to build, but Cecile said it’s been one of their most successful cost reduction strategies over the past few years.