In working through the Market Strategies track for the 2010 Fall IDN Summit it occurred to us that one thing we could do more of with suppliers is 'listen'! Even though we’ve had numerous surveys of supplier attendees we’ve never had a dedicated session where we’ve engaged the supplier community during a Summit. That is changing at the Fall Summit.

Many of you know Dr. Eugene Schneller of ASU and the fine work his department has done over the years with the healthcare supply chain. For the Fall Summit we are working with the Health Sector Supply Chain Research Consortium of ASU (HSCR) to provide supplier stakeholders a forum to discuss their thoughts on the healthcare supply chain. You’ll be able to provide your input to their work, dialogue about your questions and concerns impacting the healthcare supply chain and also learn about future ‘listening’ projects from HSCR-ASU. We look forward to working with Dr. Schneller’s colleague, Dr. Natalia Wilson as she provides context to improving the healthcare supply chain by listening to supplier stakeholders. For more information please visit here. This session will last about ninety minutes and will begin at 4:15 pm on Tuesday, September 21st. (After a long day of golf/team building and four conference sessions we invite you to join the national GPOs as they host ‘Make it A Blockbuster Night! beginning at 6:00 pm)

Speaking of listening, someone who has built his career on listening to what others are REALLY saying is Chuck Lauer. He will present a one hour discussion on his observations on selling into hospitals and healthcare systems. It’s a talk you will not want to miss and Chuck will leave plenty of time for all of your questions. I’m looking forward as Greg Firestone (who is now running Mossberg Labs as its President) moderates the Q & A exchange with Chuck.

We’ve put together two panels of leading healthcare executives to provide you their thoughts on current and future trends that will impact their hospitals and health systems. Two professionals who I have really come to respect, Ed Kuklenski and Maria Hames will moderate these exchanges designed to provide the supplier community insights into the practices of health systems and GPOs. The panelists who’ll be joining Ed and Maria are: Mike Cassady, Senior Vice President, Strategic Alliances and Product Strategy, MedAssets; Larry Dooley who recently joined Smith & Nephew as its VP of National Accounts but was formerly with ROi; Kevin Gray, Vice President Supplier Relations/Business Development, Premier, Inc; David McCombs, VP, ERP/Supply Chain Operations, Bon Secours Health System, Inc.; Bill Mosser, Vice President Materials Management, FMOL Health System and Steve Pitzer, System Director Supply Chain, Christus round out both of these panels. You can learn more by clicking here.

One of the goals of the IDN Summit is to continually provide quality education to all stakeholders of the healthcare supply chain community. We’d love to hear your comments as we continue to improve the education provided at the IDN Summit. Let me know your thoughts by emailing me john@bluegrassbm.com or give me a call at 859.523.5701.