By Pete Mercer
March 2024 – The Journal of Healthcare Contracting
The Healthcare Industry Resilience Collaborative (HIRC), a non-profit consortium of healthcare supply chain leaders focused on increasing transparency and resiliency, recently recognized the first awardees of the new HIRC Transparency Partner Badge. This distinction is designed to validate the companies’ continuous efforts and commitment to supply chain transparency and resiliency.
The inaugural badge awardees are:
- B. Braun
- BD
- Cardinal Health
- Cook Medical
- Innovative Health
- Medtronic
- Philips
- Sandoz
- Stryker
The awardees gave two primary reasons for pursuing the badge: to increase trust with providers, and to increase supply chain reliability to improve patient outcomes.
“HIRC Transparency Badge is an outstanding step forward for the healthcare industry to define what good looks like in supply chain transparency and resiliency,” said Tom Harvieux, chair of HIRC, and chief supply chain officer at BJC HealthCare. “We invite all suppliers to join HIRC and pursue the transparency badge,” Harvieux said.
HIRC is an organization of hospitals and suppliers – led by AdventHealth, BJC HealthCare, Corewell Health, Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, Stanford Health Care, and others – that has come together to promote resilience and transparency in the healthcare supply chain.
“The healthcare supply chain has lacked definitive information telling buyers when they can trust a supplier to be transparent—until now,” said Bill Selles, SVP Supply Chain at Corewell Health.
To qualify for the transparency badge, awardees must grant full visibility to all provider members regarding the following transparency measures:
- Mapping insights of final assembly and beyond for all locations that provide critical and essential products sold into the U.S. market
- A Business Continuity Maturity (BCM) assessment
“Providers can only reward transparent and resilient suppliers if we can tangibly identify who they are, and we need more providers to use the evidence-based badges to support purchasing decisions,” says Katie Dean, Business Operations and Transformation Leader at Stanford Health Care.
According to HIRC, the transparency badge is an important step toward greater transparency in healthcare, and transparency is a critical foundation to healthcare supply chain resiliency. This reality was reinforced by a recent survey of HIRC’s provider and supplier members. According to the findings:
- 99% of providers and suppliers agree that in order to create a more resilient healthcare supply chain, we must increase transparency.
- 100% of providers and 92% of suppliers agree that transparency, including visibility to geography and business continuity planning, is important to supply chain resiliency.
- 77% of providers are more likely to do business with a supplier who has the Transparency Badge, all else being equal.
- 88% of suppliers agree that having the Transparency Badge will have a positive and meaningful impact on their customer’s perception of them.
When asked to select the 3 most important components to transparency, communications candor, risk awareness, criticality alignment, bi-directional data sharing, and upstream visibility rose to the top:
- Candor on potential supply chain disruptions (73%)
- Awareness to external risks to the upstream supply chain (50%)
- Alignment on what are the critical products needing protection (49%)
- Bi-directional sharing to make demand v. capacity more accessible (49%)
- Visibility into my upstream supply chain (48%)
- Sharing of risk assessments to characterize preparedness (29%)
According to HIRC, the transparency badge process is simple to follow, standardized, and designed to empower trusted relationships. HIRC notes that the badge itself is only a step—but one that it believes is an important milestone in enabling a collaborative approach to solving for supply chain resiliency.
Addendum: Industry Reactions
Commentary from the Healthcare Community Regarding the HIRC Transparency Partner Badge Awards
“This is an outstanding step forward in coming together as an industry to define what good looks like in supply chain transparency and resiliency.”
– Tom Harvieux, Chair of HIRC, and Chief Supply Chain Officer | BJC HealthCare
“Such an important development in building out the foundation of resiliency in healthcare. Suppliers who take on this responsibility are creating the trust needed for a safer supply environment.”
– Tom Lubotsky, VP of Supply Chain | Allina Health
“Such a major milestone in our industry! It’s important to see suppliers actively demonstrate their commitment to resiliency.”
– Regine Villain, SVP of Supply Chain & Chief Supply Chain Officer | Ochsner Health
“This is a monumental step towards reinforcing the partnership between the supplier and provider community in support of patient care.”
– Sree Duggineni, Executive Director of Supply Chain | City of Hope
“Congratulations to this inaugural cohort of HIRC Transparency Partner Badge recipients!”
– Molly Zmuda, VP of Spend Management Services & Delivery | Vizient, Inc.
Commentary from Supplier Awardees of the HIRC Transparency Partner Badge
B. Braun
“B. Braun has chosen to meet the HIRC Transparency Badge requirements as part of our supply chain transparency journey. HIRC and the SRS tool are an important component of our facility, warehouse and vendor transparency initiative which will allow our company and our customers to quickly assess and understand any potential impacts from disruptions across the globe. At B. Braun, providers are our purpose, and a secure supply chain ensures that they have the products they need to focus on what matters most – the patients they serve.”
– Jeremy H. How, Corporate Vice President Sales Operations | B. Braun
BD
“At BD, we share HIRC’s commitment to creating a more transparent, resilient healthcare supply chain. Aligning to HIRC standards is an important component of our responsibility to foster a culture of collaboration, communication and transparency and enhance end to end supply chain resiliency which is essential to our ability to fulfill our mission of Advancing the world of healthTM.”
– Tanvi Narang, Director, Global Procurement; and Adam Dalum, Group VP Strategic Customer Group, BD
Cardinal Health
“Transparency is core to our manufacturer and customer engagement models. Cardinal Health chooses to meet the HIRC Transparency Badge requirements because it aligns to the collaborative relationships we have with providers in order to anticipate supply chain challenges and proactively provide solutions before there is an issue.”
– Robert Rajalingam, President, U.S. Medical Products and Distribution | Cardinal Health
“Cardinal Health has a core team that focuses on resiliency and transparency within our operating model and is committed to maturing based on customer and industry needs. We leverage data, collaborative discussions, and industry position to enhance our capabilities and exceed expectations.”
– Pete Bennett, SVP, Global Logistics | Cardinal Health
Cook Medical
“The Transparency Badge is a great way to show our commitment to being a strong business partner. I’m pleased to say that Cook is recognized as a leader in this space, and this badge is another way to reinforce our obligation to the customers and patients we serve.
One thing we lack in our industry are standards. Health systems, suppliers, and distributors often follow their own rules with little consistency. HIRC has a real opportunity to create some of these standards with their growing membership. We need someone to take ownership and bring all stakeholders to the table to shape the future, and I believe that HIRC can do this and do it well.”
– Ross Harvey, Vice President, Global Supply Chain | Cook Medical
Innovative Health
“At Innovative Health, we believe it is our obligation to give providers as much transparency into our supply capabilities as possible, in order to ensure that they never run out of supplies to treat their patients. We believe that supplier transparency and resilience will become absolutely critical in providers’ vendor selection in the coming months, and as a technology leader, we need to promote and support this.”
– Rick Ferreira, CEO | Innovative Health
Medtronic
“We are honored to be an inaugural recipient of the HIRC Transparency Partner Badge. This recognition is a direct reflection of the Medtronic Mission to alleviate pain, restore health, and extend life. Congratulations to all suppliers that have stepped forward to meet the HIRC challenge. We are creating a more resilient healthcare supply chain, together.”
– Joe Robinson, Vice President, Enterprise Risk & Continuity | Medtronic
Philips
“The pandemic put the healthcare supply chain front and center for everyone and reminded us of the importance of transparency if we are to help health systems achieve their patient care goals in these challenging situations. The HIRC Transparency Badge is proof of our commitment to working with like-minded organizations like HIRC to develop standards and a secure collaboration platform that help us to deliver on our goal of improving lives.”
– Jeff DiLullo, Market Leader North America | Philips
Sandoz
“Sandoz is proud to endorse and comply with HIRC’s Transparency Badging program as we believe providing transparency and visibility into our supply chain is a core fundamental to establishing trust with our patients and providers. By complying with HIRC’s transparency program, we believe the strength of our supply chain will be measured against a strong baseline that is understood by our customers and aligns with our mission to provide access to patients and be the most trusted supply chain in the industry.”
– Kevin Cook, VP Supply Chain North America | Sandoz
Stryker
“Stryker has made significant investments and improvements to our supply chain planning and resiliency initiatives. We are passionate about being a constant for our customers and their patients. The HIRC Transparency Badge allows us to highlight the work we have done and the investments we have made while also improving communication and trust with our hospitals. I believe the spirit of transparency will open the dialogue between Stryker and our customers to better understand their needs and how we can best show up beside them.”
– Kevin Steed, Vice-President/General Manager, Enterprise Account Management | Stryker
“Stryker continues to make investments and shift our approach with the goal of being an industry leader for product quality and availability. Our commitment is to focus on continued improvement while always keeping the patient in mind.”
– Dale C. Pease, Vice-President, Division Operations, Medical, Global Quality and Operations | Stryker