Henry A. Berling, through his Southern home-spun affability, helped to forge and expand a number of prominent distributors, including Owens & Minor Inc. and Stuart Medical, as well as craft solid contracts with some of the larger healthcare systems and industry-leading integrated delivery networks searching for supplier partners to assist in cost reduction and process standardization.
Robert P. “Bud” Bowen demonstrated his customer service and group purchasing acumen by helping to form, develop and grow Amerinet Inc. into one of the largest and leading group purchasing organizations in the nation, translating his prior administrative and supply chain experience from long-term care provider New England Management Corp. and distributor American Hospital Supply Co.
Brent T. Johnson relied on decades of supply chain experience in other industries to develop Intermountain Healthcare’s highly regarded consolidated service center, which has served as a model for other healthcare organizations to emulate, as well as to implement a self-distribution strategy generating noteworthy benefits for his organization and the patients served, and extending potential boundaries for others.
Norman A. Krumrey applied the supply chain skills he honed in the aircraft industry to hospitals starting in the early 1970s, implementing centralized process and coding controls and automated cart systems in supply processing and distribution, as well as working with clinicians and physicians, which elevated him to the C-suite as a supply chain leader, and later propelled him to GPO leadership ranks.
Keith Kuchta may be synonymous with Kimberly-Clark Health Care after spending nearly four decades with the company, but it’s his industry contributions through Kimberly-Clark Health Care that elevates his stature, including helping to establish the annual Georgetown Healthcare Leadership Institute for hospital supply chain and other departmental leaders and developing a number of Strategic Marketplace Initiative projects.
Randall A. Lipps, an industrial engineer from the airline industry, was inspired and motivated by personal healthcare experience to develop and manufacture automated technology for hospitals and other healthcare facilities in an effort to reduce – if not eliminate – process inefficiencies, redundancies and risks in the administration and delivery of patient care.
Dale A. Montgomery represents a bonafide healthcare supply chain veteran, having completed his career as a C-suite-based supply chain executive after working up the ladder from orderly four decades earlier for the same organization. His dedication to his employer was matched by his dedication to the supply chain profession, having spearheaded clinical quality value analysis and dedicated physician relationships to solidify his organization’s clinical, fiscal and operational foundation.
Richard A. Perrin has been a tireless advocate for and ambassador of healthcare supply chain information technology use and a pioneering voice for supply data standards since migrating from the hospital supply chain leadership ranks where he, too, started his healthcare career as an orderly. Perrin also helped bridge the clinical and corporate gaps between government and private sector supply chain operations.
Joseph M. Pleasant so faithfully and steadfastly believed in healthcare information systems interoperability and supply data standards that he helped found and chair separate organizations to justify and promote either cause. Through his CIO chair in Premier’s C-suite, Pleasant worked with other GPOs to drive data standards adoption and implementation as well as helped the federal Department of Defense pilot data standards use for its facilities.
Earl G. Reubel, 1937-2011, broke new corporate cultural ground with the introduction of what he called “supplier diversity” mentoring to nurture diverse, small and local suppliers into growing incrementally via financial and operational planning into national players even as he led his own distribution company. Through the late Reubel’s efforts, suppliers learned how to reach across the provider aisles, linking the C-suite and other administrators to physicians and clinicians serving patients.