Scripps Health’s Cecile Hozouri, JHC’s Contracting Professional of the Year, shares how inclusive leadership, clinician engagement and patient-first thinking turn resistance into results.
Cecile Hozouri, Corporate Vice President of Supply Chain at San Diego, California-based Scripps Health, credits her leadership philosophy to early experiences in consulting and a career spanning multiple segments of healthcare operations. Reflecting on her time in consulting before joining Scripps, she recalls walking into hospitals where clinicians and nurses would eye-roll at her presence – an early lesson in understanding the human side of organizational change. “It was remarkable seeing that organizations back then didn’t really include people at the table when mapping out new processes,” she says.
That insight became a cornerstone of her approach: collaboration is essential, particularly when implementing significant transformation. Hozouri believes that even skeptics must be included in planning and implementation. “They should be there helping you design it,” she says, noting that engagement not only fosters smoother execution but can also be motivational for the team.
Hozouri’s leadership philosophy extends across the many facets of healthcare she has overseen, including IT, revenue cycle, operations and clinical integrations. These cross-functional experiences reinforced the importance of inclusive leadership and patient-centered thinking. Whether untangling revenue cycle complexities, implementing new systems or introducing lean methodologies in surgery, Hozouri notes that the methodology remains consistent: get the right people in the room and ensure their voices are heard. “It is really critical to get people’s voices heard early on, thoroughly defining the objective that we are about to do,” she explains.
Her focus is always on removing friction and unnecessary noise that can hinder clinicians’ ability to care for patients. By stripping out these obstacles, Hozouri aims to enable physicians and nurses to work at the top of their licenses. Across every initiative, from supply chain optimization to operational improvements, the patient remains at the center of every decision. This approach transforms change from a disruptive force into a collaborative effort driven by the expertise and collective intelligence of the team.
For Hozouri, leadership is not just about directing change but about creating an environment where people feel heard, empowered and invested in the outcome. Her career demonstrates that true transformation in healthcare is rooted in collaboration, cross-functional insight and a steadfast commitment to putting patients first. In every challenge she undertakes, these principles continue to guide how she leads and drives meaningful change across Scripps Health.
Lessons in centralizing the supply chain
Centralizing supply chains across a multi-site healthcare system is never simply a matter of technology or budgets. Hozouri learned this lesson firsthand. She describes the challenges of moving from siloed, site-managed supply chains into a centralized model. It is less about logistics and more about addressing the human element.
“One of the biggest barriers wasn’t the system itself – it was that feeling of losing control over something teams had already managed for years,” Hozouri says. Many staff members initially questioned whether centralization would compromise responsiveness or their ability to meet patient care needs. Skepticism was addressed head-on by making the critics active partners in the process.
Hozouri and her team formed a multifaceted group that included frontline clinicians, nurses, and operational leaders. These individuals were given genuine ownership in the design of the new processes, with autonomy to map out the current state and identify “non-negotiable” aspects essential to patient care. The key, Hozouri notes, was listening – and when processes didn’t feel right to the stakeholders, her team didn’t defend the status quo or insist on a predetermined solution.
“We just asked them to help us fix it,” she explains. This collaborative approach transformed skeptics into architects of the change, who eventually presented solutions back to the broader team and embraced the centralized system they had helped design.
The approach became foundational to how the supply chain team operates today. Whether rolling out new technology, standardizing processes or introducing equipment, Hozouri’s team starts by asking a simple question: who will this affect, and who needs to be involved for it to succeed? “Strong relationships with our clinicians and their willingness to partner with us really make us successful,” she says.
This philosophy extends to standardization initiatives, which can often be met with concerns about loss of autonomy. Hozouri and her team balance urgency with collaboration. For urgent patient care needs, such as specialized surgeries, clinicians and their leaders are engaged immediately to determine priorities and guide adoption. For other initiatives, projects are run through Scripps’ clinical value analysis process, bringing together physicians, pharmacy teams, infection control specialists and other stakeholders. Decisions are based on evidence and data, with cost considerations addressed later, ensuring that changes align with clinical outcomes rather than just financial targets.
A current example is a clinically integrated project on Skin Substitutes. Surgeons and service lines were deeply involved in defining clinical use criteria, reviewing evidence, and making recommendations. Each service line now drives the change, illustrating Hozouri’s principle that those closest to patient care should be at the center of decision-making. “When criteria is implemented, it’s really driven by the physician leaders themselves,” she says.
Hozouri emphasizes that the role of the supply chain team is to support initiatives by providing data, evidence, and logistical guidance – but not to dictate changes from the top down. In her experience, involving clinicians from the beginning mitigates resistance and fosters ownership, ensures practical solutions and strengthens collaboration across the organization.
The makings of a great team
Hozouri emphasizes that her team’s culture is rooted in evidence-based decision-making and multidisciplinary collaboration. At the heart of this approach is Scripps’ clinical value analysis program, which brings the right stakeholders together to assess new products, equipment or processes. “We get sound decisions pretty quickly, and we lead with evidence,” Hozouri explains. Cost is considered, but operational fit and organizational impact are equally important. Every request, whether it’s a new piece of equipment or a product requiring significant workflow changes, is evaluated in the context of the entire system, not just an individual clinician’s needs.
This structured, multidisciplinary process – including finance, pharmacy, supply chain, leadership and service line representation – also ensures that when a crisis arises, such as a shortage or recall affecting patient care, the right team can be mobilized quickly. By embedding collaboration and systems thinking into day-to-day operations, Hozouri ensures that her team can respond effectively under pressure.
Equally important are the intangible qualities she seeks in team members. Hozouri encourages what she calls “stylish innovation” – the ability to think creatively without losing sight of system-wide collaboration and process integrity. Team members are empowered to develop solutions independently, test ideas in whiteboard sessions and engage directly with clinicians, ancillary departments, and executive leadership to assess feasibility.
“I want my team to develop themselves into what they want to be,” she says, emphasizing autonomy and self-direction as part of the leadership approach.
A chance to engage
Leaders in healthcare wanting to create lasting change often face a common challenge: organizational inertia. Hozouri does not view this as an obstacle, but rather an opportunity to engage.
“Inertia is kind of sticky,” she says, describing teams who say, “Well, this is the way we’ve always done it.” For leaders eager to drive change, her advice is simple: bring the skeptics in. Invite them to the table, encourage them to poke holes in your ideas and seek to understand their fears. “Inertia will always be there, but keep it close, understand it, work with them,” she explains. Over time, resistance often diminishes when individuals feel included rather than threatened.
Hozouri identifies another critical barrier to innovation in healthcare: fragmented data. The industry is burdened with hundreds of disparate feeds, inconsistent formats, and tangled supplier systems, making timely, evidence-based decision-making difficult. “Imagine if that insight, once we finally get it, could predict shortages immediately for everyone, shave off costs, improve outcomes,” she says. Standardizing data could transform the supply chain landscape – enabling faster contracts, reducing outages, and providing real-time clinical analytics to inform smarter decisions. Solving this “data mess,” Hozouri believes, would unlock significant efficiency and clinical value.
Over the next 12 to 24 months, Hozouri’s strategic priorities reflect both immediate operational needs and long-term planning. Sourcing initiatives for purchase services, new products and contract renewals remain a core focus, particularly in partnership with clinicians. For example, in interventional radiology, the value analysis team is examining variation, comparing quality outcomes and evaluating cost differences across peer groups to optimize utilization of standard equipment and products. These efforts ensure that operational efficiency aligns with high-quality patient care.
Simultaneously, Hozouri is looking further ahead, imagining the supply chain of 2030. With a new hospital and clinics on the horizon, she is engaging with support and ancillary services to rethink traditional processes and build a more resilient, reliable supply chain. “It’s a perfect time to start getting people to the table … to architect a different way we may function in our supply chain,” she says.
What keeps Hozouri motivated after more than two decades in healthcare is less about accolades and more about the people she grows along the way. “One thing that wakes me up every day is really growing the leaders that I have, and the future leaders to be those supply chain heroes,” she says. While she enjoys collaborating with the CFO, chief medical officers, and leading strategic clinical integration projects, Hozouri finds the most fulfillment in mentoring emerging talent. Watching a supply tech evolve into a confident leader or seeing an analyst stand in front of peers at a conference to share lessons learned, she says, is “really what fills me up.”
This focus on developing talent is central to Hozouri’s philosophy of leadership. She encourages her team to embrace their own “stylish innovation,” to think creatively while remaining grounded in collaboration and evidence-based practices. The leaders she cultivates are equipped not only to solve problems but also to inspire the next generation – creating a ripple effect that strengthens the organization and the broader healthcare supply chain community.
Recognition from industry organizations, including Reuters and Becker’s, has been humbling for Hozouri, though she views it less as personal achievement and more as a validation of her approach to leadership. Being named a trailblazer in supply chain, she says, reflects a willingness to step into uncertainty, challenge long-standing processes, and open doors for others. “I pride myself on that part,” she explains. “I feel as though these past 20 years, I’ve been fortunate to open many new doors in this industry, and I’m determined to prop those doors wide open.”
Photos courtesy, Scripps Health