Bellwether Class of 2010

Ted Almon

As president and CEO of the Claflin Co., one of the industry’s leading regional independent healthcare product distributors, Ted Almon embraced and implemented advanced logistics programs, such as stockless, for hospitals and directed his company to become the industry’s first ISO 9002 Certified distribution firm. As chairman of HIDA and NDC, Almon also remains a passionate, public and tireless advocate for supply chain management principles, distribution performance and fundamental healthcare reform in the areas of cost, quality and access.

Carter F. Blake, (1937-2015)

Equipped with Army training and a military medical career in sterile processing, Carter Blake entered into the purchasing arena by detailing pharmaceuticals to doctors, clinics and hospitals and then transferred into an entry-level junior buyer position for a regional faith-based group purchasing organization. After mastering supply chain fundamentals with the group, he ventured more than 1,000 miles away to develop a group purchasing program from the ground up for another regional faith-based organization that spanned five states. Before retiring in late 1997, Blake finished his nearly four-decade career as an executive for Vector Healthsystems, a founding shareholder of Amerinet Inc.

Br. Ned Gerber, (1951 - 2020)

Br. Ned Gerber, CPA, was a diehard evangelist and developer of industry benchmarks, having spearheaded the national Performance Indicators program for AHRMM, one of the earliest national sources of metrics for healthcare supply chain management. During the 1980s and early 1990s, he was a prolific author and speaker on healthcare materials management topics. After leading supply chain activities at Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Gerber transitioned into a consulting career where his devotion to clients was legendary, including making 11 p.m. Friday visits to hospitals to see how the 3rd shift in distribution was doing. Gerber continually pushed the envelope for new ideas. He proceeded to devote himself to ministry work, serving as a Benedictine Brother, while consulting on broader healthcare topics in Sydney, Australia.

George R. Gossett, (1927-1965)

The late George R. Gossett believed in the fundamental importance of healthcare materials management, envisioning its long-term prominence, and promoting educational and professional development of the discipline. While serving at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital, Gossett was instrumental in transforming the group that would become known as the Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management (AHRMM) today into a full-fledged personal membership organization that emphasized professional education, and was elected its first president in 1962. AHRMM aptly named its highest honor, an award that recognizes industry-advancing leadership and professionalism, after Gossett.

Frank Kilzer

Frank Kilzer is recognized as being the first to implement an internally developed bar-code scanning and electronic commerce technology in a healthcare materials management operation in 1985, located in North Dakota. For the past four decades he has focused on educating all sectors of the healthcare industry about the benefits of using these technologies to streamline the supply chain. Kilzer continues to assist hospitals, distributors, manufacturers and the transportation sector with reengineering their material handling processes and remains an active driver for developing industry standards for bar coding healthcare products.

Michael Louviere

Michael Louviere actively linked supply chain with pharmacy operations more than two decades before it became a more mainstream model in management efficiency circles. Louviere parlayed his pharmacy background and training into progressively higher supply chain management executive positions for a number of hospitals and health systems. During the turbulent healthcare reform-focused 1990s, Louviere assumed a leading supply chain and strategic product development executive role at investor-owned Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., which also developed a consolidated service center model under his watch. Louviere also pioneered supply chain operations for a market-leading group of cancer-treatment facilities.

Robert Bross Majors, (1943-2007)

The late Robert Majors was an early and avid supporter of electronic commerce with expertise in healthcare systems automation, but he was renowned for his stalwart dedication to group purchasing and its inherent value to hospital supply chain management, and best known for his tireless efforts to promote supply chain as a strategic component of hospital operations that belonged in the C-suite . With a keen understanding of the buyer-seller relationship culled from nearly three decades in hospital materials management and 10 years in sales, Majors strove for seamless partnerships with every department in the hospital setting to generate high-quality patient outcomes.

Franklin J. Marshall

Credit Frank Marshall for bringing centralized purchasing and distribution center programs to a small faith-based healthcare system in North Dakota in the late 1960s to mid-1970s, and later for establishing and implementing successful group purchasing programs in Delaware, Washington, DC, and Denver. During his term as executive director of Denver-based COPAC Inc., Marshall nearly tripled the regional GPO’s membership base and more than tripled its contracting commitment. He was best known in GPO circles as a tireless and eloquent advocate for committed-volume contracting practices, and for the advancement of GPO excellence. He also served as AHRMM president from 1974 to 1975.

Daniel E. Mayworm

As an active participant in healthcare supply chain management development, Dan Mayworm successfully published several influential magazines dedicated to the industry and served as a frequent speaker at various trade association meetings after he spent a market-leading career in medical product packaging. A prolific author, educator, speaker and advocate of materials management, sterile processing, surgical services and infection control issues, principles and standards, Mayworm consistently sought to foster clinical and process innovation and quality, as much as report and write about it. His publications and seminars encouraged and influenced many in the industry to explore the scope and depth of the healthcare supply chain as something more than just purchasing.

Foster G. McGaw, (1897-1986)

If there were a list of most frequently mentioned leaders and titans in the healthcare supply chain industry, Foster McGaw certainly would be on it, if not perched near or at the top. His name remains a marketed brand and his quotations and business philosophies are used by many companies as benchmarks. McGaw founded American Hospital Supply, one of the leading and most influential medical/surgical product manufacturers/distributors in the nation that promoted ethical supply chain management principles and advocated high-quality customer service. McGaw and his company, which now is part of Cardinal Health Inc., shaped the hospital supply industry and helped to create and develop the standards under which it continues to operate. He also was a renowned philanthropist who donated millions of dollars to hospitals and educational institutions.

Mark M. McKenna, (1948-2011)

As the second and longest-serving president to date of one of the nation’s largest group purchasing organizations in terms of annual purchasing volume, Mark McKenna brought growth, with order and stability to Novation during a turbulent period in GPO history. McKenna deftly guided Novation during his tenure, overseeing membership and program expansion and diversification, as well as advocating and defending group purchasing on Capitol Hill and within the healthcare industry.

G. Gilmer Minor III (1940-2023)

Gil Minor III has been intimately involved with the healthcare supply chain industry since the 1960s, well before he took his family-owned company, Owens & Minor Inc., public, and within the last decade, set out on the path through acquisitions and organic growth to become the nation’s largest distributor of medical/surgical supplies. Under Minor’s leadership, the company pioneered the Activity-Based Costing method for pricing distribution services, just-in-time/stockless distribution and a series of software products for enhancing supply chain management efficiency. He continued the company founders’ principles of providing services to customers and dealing with colleagues ethically, solidifying the company’s reputation in the industry. Minor also spearheaded the founding of O&M University, originally to provide supply chain training and career advancing education to O&M staffers, but, in recent years, has expanded access to the hospital community that may not have other resources for formally training its supply chain staff.

Curt M. Selquist

As company group chairman of Johnson & Johnson Medical and Johnson & Johnson Healthcare Systems, Curt Selquist wasn’t interested in watching Internet-based electronic commerce develop from the sidelines, nor was he content or satisfied with available options at the turn of the millennium. So he marshaled support within Johnson & Johnson’s top corporate hierarchy, as well as rallied and recruited his chief executive counterparts at such leading firms as Abbott Laboratories, Baxter International, GE Healthcare and Medtronic, to found, fund and launch an independent, open and vendor-neutral online trading exchange. Today, GHX remains the nation’s largest online healthcare e-commerce hub and one of the largest in the world.

Donald G. Soth, (1920-1997)

In healthcare circles, the late Don Soth successfully managed the delicate balance between the art and science of supply chain efficiency, and could be described as both a pragmatist and a visionary with his sterile processing and logistics concepts and implementations. As the face in front of AMSCO’s Systems Division, which now is part of STERIS Corp., Soth worked with the late Gordon Friesen (Bellwether Class of 2009 Inductee) to develop a variety of material handling and processing models and technologies, such as automated loading and unloading washer-sterilizer units, pneumatic tube systems, cart lifts and guided vehicle systems. AMSCO’s industry-leading education programs served as the forum for these models and concepts and for Soth’s skills in presenting them.

Louis Vietti

Lou Vietti was one of the more prominent advocates for implementing state-of-the-art industrial applications to hospital support services and linking supply chain operations to information technology. Vietti demonstrated a mastery of JIT/stockless distribution in a university hospital setting and developed a first-class, off-site warehouse for the University of Minnesota Hospitals and Clinics. He showed how the use of computers and exchange carts in inventory and logistics management could improve accuracy and productivity, as well as process flexibility for clinicians.

Congratulations to the Bellwether Class of 2010: