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5 innovators, leaders to be inducted this fall to the Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Hall of Fame

SCHAUMBURG, IL (July 25, 2024) — Bellwether League Foundation's Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Hall of Fame selected five professionals, recognized as innovators and leaders paving the way forward for their industry and professional contributions and performance, as honorees of the Bellwether Class of 2024. They join 143 earlier honorees inducted since inception of the organization.

Bellwether League Foundation selected the following professionals for the 17th Bellwether Class: Ron Denton, Dave Hunter, Gail L. Kovacs, Eugene S. Schneller, Ph.D., and Celeste West.

Bellwether Class of 2024 honorees will be inducted at the 17th Annual Bellwether League Foundation Induction & Recognition Event (BLFIRE), scheduled for Monday, October 7, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Bellwether League Foundation selected these professionals for their achievements and contributions in the delivery of quality care through efficient and innovative supply chain operations. They represent creative thinkers who take the initiative, expand the boundaries of what's possible, and perform in a way that improves and promotes the profession of supply chain management among hospitals and other healthcare provider organizations, group purchasing organizations (GPOs), product manufacturers and distributors, consulting firms, academic/educational institutions and media properties.

Barbara Strain, Bellwether Class of 2021, Board Chairman, Bellwether League Foundation, saluted the newest Bellwether Class of Honorees for their enduring and innovative contributions to the profession and industry.

"The 17th Bellwether Class Honorees represent a broad scope of the industry, spanning active, retired and deceased supply chain leaders from provider organizations, consultancies and academia," Strain said. "One unifying theme among their collective careers is the ability to pivot and strengthen the healthcare supply chain profession by recognizing the evolving delivery of patient care. The careers, insights and legacies of Ron Denton, Dave Hunter, Gail Kovacs, Gene Schneller and Celeste West will forever strengthen the links of the healthcare supply chain. Take the time to get to know them as we have by learning about them and joining family, friends and colleagues as we celebrate their accomplishments at the BLFIRE17 live event on October 7 when we gather to shine a beacon of light on these distinguished honorees."

Bellwether Class of 2024

Ron Denton applied his distinctive 20-year military medical services experience into a private-sector healthcare supply chain career that spanned healthcare providers, healthcare suppliers and a successful supply chain consultancy that emphasized the value of administrative and clinical customer service, low-unit-of-measure inventory, purchased services, technology adoption and value analysis. Denton was among the first to implement a cart exchange program in the late 1970s, low-unit-of-measure distribution and inventory management in the late 1980s and among the first to recognize and incorporate purchased services and interim management as key components of value analysis before the turn of the millennium. He was one of the recognized experts in such advanced supply chain management practices as automated purchasing/order management, logical-unit-of-measure/just-in-time distribution programs, clinical inventory management programs and total supply replenishment initiatives. His firm also co-developed and launched a new proprietary inventory and space optimization analytics software program.

Dave Hunter was an early adopter of expanding the traditional boundaries of supply chain to include branded strategic and capital sourcing services; branded consultative services, logistics and operations; accounts payable all within a consolidated service center that served a three-state area in the Pacific Northwest via a warehouse management system (WMS) application that used carousels and pick-to-light technology to deliver low-unit-of-measure totes directly to each facility's point-of-care locations. Hunter's system leadership also extended to clinical engineering, facilities management, environmental services and food and nutrition services under a branded operation with its own profit-and-loss filings. Through his system's group purchasing organization (GPO), Hunter created and developed a regional custom contracting consortium that added healthcare facilities across two additional states (five total), solidifying West Coast coverage south and up north to Alaska. He also worked with IT to develop an IT asset distribution, reuse, recycle and repair program that centrally managed computers for distribution and life cycle management services.

As a progressive healthcare supply chain management executive, Gail Kovacs poked through several barriers that historically challenged the profession. She worked directly with clinicians to improve their business operations, co-developing a five-year business plan with oncologists to launch, equip and supply one of the earliest dedicated cancer centers in the nation. Kovacs also led efforts to standardize contracts for products and services for her healthcare system and helped to develop a unified regional healthcare organization and a statewide purchasing alliance in Ohio. Throughout her hospital-based experience, she initiated an online equipment maintenance oversight program with consolidated purchasing at one facility, alternative clinical staffing programs at another facility that drew avid support from cardiac physicians and surgeons and led the conversion to PAR replenishment from exchanges carts. In the mid-1970s, Kovacs collaborated with IT to develop a daily screening tool that identified nosocomial infections.

In academic circles since the 1980s, Gene Schneller has kept his fingers on the pulse of healthcare supply chain operations through educational and literary endeavors that elevated his name among the most recognized and influential experts in the areas of researching, tracking and communicating development and growth of an industry and profession. As an active proponent of cost reduction, distribution, group purchasing and health policy that links clinical, financial and operational functions to solidify and fortify healthcare organizational success, Schneller has molded himself one of the leading vocal advocates of supply chain effectiveness and efficiency through his university-supported center and consortium and his foundational lecture series. Schneller has completed and presented extensive operational research on identifying, managing through and preventing supply chain disruptions, based on the recent global pandemic, as well as ways to improve innovations and operations within the federal Department of Defense.

Celeste West was best known for bending traditional healthcare supply chain borders to centralize and standardize sourcing and analytics, along with IT, decades before it became fashionable and widely pursued. She viewed healthcare supply chain as a vertical market with a horizontal span, regularly recruiting supply chain professionals from outside healthcare to contribute and implement their ideas on distribution, inventory management, transportation and warehousing within the provider network. She developed dedicated supply chain teams to provide value analysis and service to multiple clinical specialties as well as nonacute care operations system-wide that earned C-suite recognition and respect for the department and function. This led her to establish an Executive Council that drew active participation by C-suite leadership in supply chain sourcing and value analysis initiatives. She was an early adopter of bar coding for inventory tracking, scorecards for supply chain savings and IT-infused contract management and value analysis processes.

About Bellwether League Foundation

Bellwether League Foundation (BLF) offers programs that educate, endow and evaluate professionals in healthcare supply chain performance excellence via the Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Hall of Fame and its growing philanthropic efforts.

The Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Hall of Fame evaluates and validates professionals submitted for consideration in its three award programs: Bellwether Honorees, Future Famers and Ammer Honorees. The Hall of Fame also offers educational and professional development content via the Bellwether Leadership Forum and its "Leaders & Luminaries" multimedia of online and printed content.

The Hall of Fame selects deceased, retired and currently active professionals with a minimum of 25 years of exemplary service and leadership performance in supply chain operations that meet its criteria to be recognized publicly as Bellwether Class Honorees.

Future Famers represent supply chain professionals early in their healthcare careers who do not yet qualify for Bellwether consideration but have contributed meaningfully to the profession and industry.

Honorees who receive the "Dean S. Ammer Award for Healthcare Supply Chain Performance Excellence" represent noteworthy executives and professionals in the middle of their careers who, through their innovative leadership and influential project management experience, best exemplify the practice and spirit of healthcare supply chain performance excellence.

To date, the Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Hall of Fame has honored 143 innovators, leaders and pioneers in healthcare supply chain management in seven distinct categories: Provider-Based Supply Chain Management, Manufacturing, Distribution, Group Purchasing, Consulting Services, Academia and Media. The Hall of Fame also has recognized 42 Future Famers and four Ammer Honorees.

BLF's philanthropy efforts support capstone educational and developmental projects, grants and scholarships to college-bound high school students who plan to study supply chain curricula, current collegiate students who major in supply chain-related careers and professionals who pursue continuing education through associations and universities.

BLF salutes its six sustaining sponsors at the Founding/Platinum level — GHX, HealthTrust, Owens & Minor, Premier, Vizient and Wingfoot Media — and more than 19 additional sustaining sponsors at the Gold, Silver and Bronze levels, a generous group that represents manufacturers, distributors, group purchasing organizations (GPOs), integrated delivery networks (IDNs), consulting firms, associations and media outlets.

Launched in late July 2007 by a group of influential veterans in the healthcare supply chain industry, Bellwether League Foundation began as a 501(c)(6) not-for-profit corporation that upgraded to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in January 2021.