THE GUTHRIE CLINIC
What began as a dedicated medical group in 1910 , The Guthrie Clinic , now an entire health system known as Guthrie , has stamped its mark on northern Pennsylvania and southern New York with over a century of high quality care – but like any longrunning business , Guthrie requires the occasional transformative update . Enter Grace Jackson , VP Procurement – Supply Chain for the business , who is perfectly placed as someone with a long history of roles in the medical business to take on this task .
On stepping into her role , Jackson set out to rethink , reshape , and restructure Guthrie ’ s supply chain . The goals : heightening efficiency , driving down costs , and improving customer care , all of which can be achieved through a combination of technological advancements , better processes , and the human touch .
The main stumbling block became apparent almost as soon as Jackson became involved just over a year ago ; like most healthcare organizations , Guthrie was holding onto some legacy systems and outdated processes that required a full overhaul . Fortunately , Jackson and her team were prepared to tackle this issue .
“ We had multiple disparate systems , manual processes , and a lot of status quo going on ,” she explains . “ We really needed to be able to raise the importance of the supply chain to a strategic level .”
Standardization is an ongoing project . “ We have a lot of systems in place , but they ’ re not really integrated ; they don ’ t talk to each other . So , we wanted to achieve a number of things in terms of automation and integration , better visibility with regards to business intelligence , and improved reporting across the organization .”
Jackson identified exactly what was needed , starting from the top down . Making management understand the importance of creating a supply chain strategy was a priority , before a vision could truly be defined and articulated . Guthrie now has this vision in place , with a series of goals specified , but a lot of ongoing work needs to be done .
“ We want to use the technology as an enabler ,” says Jackson . “ We didn ’ t want to just go out and seek
76 December 2017