Last call to share your award-winning Supply Chain team. Deadline May 21

Healthcare Purchasing News exclusively has recognized and honored supply chain departments for 16 consecutive years, and your department could be the 17th recipient, but you won’t know unless you nominate your team for HPN's 2021 Supply Chain Department of the Year award!

Suppliers also may encourage their provider end users to share their successes. Entries will be evaluated on elements disclosed in writing or provided in the following 4 areas:

·        Process Innovation – How the department approaches day-to-day operations for internal customers that highlights and reinforces its importance to the organization, including the use of information technology and performance improvement management processes to improve efficiency and productivity. Also, how the staff members communicate, cooperate and work together to make the department collectively greater than the sum of its multiple functions.

·         Customer service – How the department manages product evaluations, contracting, purchasing, distribution, inventory management, consulting and facilitation for internal customers, including the operating room, nursing floors, and others, such as laboratory, radiology, clinical specialties and outpatient services.

·         Financial/Operational Cost Savings – How specifically the department has reduced non-labor and labor expenses to maintain a healthy bottom line for the organization, including increased productivity, improved service levels and fewer errors.

·         Comprehensive Strategic Planning – How the department efficiently and intelligently works with partners along the supply chain continuum, including raw materials suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, group purchasing organizations, service companies (such as consulting firms and waste management firms) to assist their internal customers within the individual hospital or multiple facilities within the health system for the benefit of patients.

There are no limits on the length of your entry, but please provide quantitative support for any claims made. A judging panel of respected Supply Chain professionals from across the country, as well as selected Supply Chain experts on our editorial advisory board and our HPN editorial staff and will evaluate each nomination.

For the nomination, highlight specific, measurable achievements and goals over the past year. Also include your name, telephone number, number of full-time equivalents, scope of responsibilities, and number of beds at the facility.

To qualify nominees MUST comply with the following rules:

· Only nominations submitted exclusively and originally to HPN and not to any other publication or association awards for any aspect of supply chain, including excellence,

innovation and performance improvement, will be considered. If you plan to submit or have submitted your case study as a nomination to other organizations (in print or online) in addition to HPN, we ask that you make a choice between HPN and those other organizations.

· All nominations must focus on team-driven contributions and results more heavily than outsourced/purchased services to consultants, distributors, GPOs, manufacturers and software companies. Basically, emphasize what your team has accomplished over what a third-party vendor did for you.

· But you must share with us relevant details on how some of your supply and service partners (manufacturers, distributors, GPOs, software companies and consultants) have contributed to your group’s development, growth and success. What did each of these key vendor partners do for/with you that mattered? Brag about what makes each of them useful and how they help /have helped your team succeed. Please identify each supplier/service company by name and include a sentence or two on what each did.

· All nominated facilities must be willing to share relevant basic financial details with our readers, such as annual revenues, annual expenses and annual purchasing volume.

IMPORTANT: ONCE AN ORGANIZATION HAS BEEN HONORED AND PROFILED FOR THIS AWARD IT IS NOT ELIGIBLE TO BE RENOMINATED. CHECK THE ATTACHED LIST FOR THOSE THAT HAVE BEEN HONORED AND RECOGNIZED TO DATE.

Document your accomplishments and submit to [email protected]. If you have any questions, please email [email protected].

Submission deadline is Friday, May 21, 2021.

The winning team will be featured as the cover story in HPN’s August 2021 issue.  Read about last year's winner - Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health - at: https://www.hpnonline.com/sourcing-logistics/article/21145738/dartmouthhitchcock-team-pulls-supply-chain-through-pillars-of-progress. Read about all past winners here at: https://www.hpnonline.com/hpn-hall-fame/#SCMDOY.