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1. Identify Your Needs

Starting at the beginning by identifying your needs and goals may seem like a no-brainer, but be advised that logistics networks have suffered from self-inflicted inefficiencies by overlooking this critical measure. It’s easy to continue with the same methods that have proven to be successful and determine that your needs have not changed. However, look at it this way: life changes, our industry changes, and your organization changes. It wouldn’t make much sense to expect your healthcare logistics needs to remain the same. A few questions to consider when evaluating your needs are:

2. Align Stakeholders

Fragmentation is a healthy logistics network’s worst nightmare. Fragmentation usually occurs when all departments within your operation aren’t aligned, leading to multiple vendors, inefficient routing, and overall waste. The most successful networks encompass the needs of the entire organization, and buy-in from key stakeholders within departments utilizing the network is a must. This is the first step towards creating a streamlined network that prevents overlap and unnecessary costs. To get started, ask yourself, “do I know how the other departments in our healthcare organization move items?”

3. Select The Best Process

This is a callback to our first tip. Once your needs are identified, it’s time to determine how they can be met. Again what has proven successful in the past may not be applicable today, and solutions that are successful for other organizations may not be a good fit for yours. For example, a traditional RPF process might work for an organization with minimal logistics needs. However, a mid-size health system with a logistics network that covers a difficult geography and integrates materials for multiple departments will require a more involved network design process than an RFP can afford.

Aligning your organization with a trusted logistics partner to bring industry experience to the table when choosing this process can be a game changer for this step. Along with experience, a trusted logistics partner will also know what questions need to be asked to create an efficient logistics network, which brings us to our last tip.

4. Ask Yourself The Right Questions

To know where you’re headed, you have to understand where you’ve been. Asking the right questions is vital to creating or evaluating your current logistics network. What has worked for your network in the past, and conversely, what hasn’t worked? The previous question should be a given to ask, but more complex issues within your network will also need to be addressed. For example, what is your approach toward routing, governance, reporting, and technology? Partnering with an experienced logistics partner goes a long way for this step as well.

There we have it, four tips that will help when building your healthcare logistics network. If you found this article helpful, our professionals at MedSpeed can provide additional assistance on your journey to a sound healthcare logistics network. Contact us today.

While CFOs will face uncharted waters in the next year and beyond, challenging times, like a soft economy, can be the best time for innovation and transformation.

June is designated as National Safety Month by the National Safety Council, with the directive to “help keep each other safe from the workplace to anyplace.” As both an employer of many “safety sensitive” team members and a service provider to healthcare organizations, it’s worth discussing how the service MedSpeed provides aids in keeping people safe.

If you look up patient safety on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) website, they note that “the occurrence of adverse events due to unsafe care is likely one of the 10 leading causes of death and disability in the world.” While the cause of harm can be from a range of adverse events, nearly 50% of those adverse events are preventable.

Let that sink in for a second. Almost half of those adverse events are preventable. Clearly, the goal must be to keep those “adverse events” to a minimum. (more…)

Whether in providing the day-in-day-out service that supports care delivery in our communities or in extraordinary examples of MedSpeeders who go above and beyond, the work of our team is what sets us apart.  They are the centerpiece of the trust and confidence bestowed upon us to play our role in delivering health, a trust that has earned us the opportunity to serve 27 of our country’s top 100 health systems. (more…)

“MedSpeed is uniquely positioned to enable healthcare to become more agile and integrated as it strives to serve an even larger patient population in new care settings,” said Creasman. “I look forward to working with our customers and MedSpeeders to support this exciting endeavor.”

Creasman joined MedSpeed in 2013 as Regional Vice President of Sales, and has successfully developed partnerships with numerous leading health systems and reference laboratories across the west and central regions of the U.S. Prior to joining MedSpeed, he served as Director of National Accounts for Care Innovations, a digital health start-up focused on virtual care delivery and has held various other positions in the healthcare industry. A graduate of GE’s Crotonville Leadership Institute, Creasman holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Denver.

The article notes that two recent academic studies estimated that the U.S. healthcare industry accounts for 8.5% of the country’s GHG emissions, while the global health sector is responsible for about 4.6% of total GHG emissions, and roughly 25% of that is from the U.S. (more…)

John Schwartz, chief revenue officer at HSBlox highlighted how his team “uncovered the value of incorporating social health requirements.” He went on to say that care outside the walls of the hospital continues to grow and so too has a need to incorporate SDOH. (more…)

We have all learned a lot since spring 2020, and a recent Becker’s Hospital Review article asked healthcare leaders to weigh in on the supply chain and what they now realize. Here are some outtakes that I thought were worth sharing. (more…)

“I am delighted to join the MedSpeed leadership team at this important point in the company’s growth journey,” said Laackman. “The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting challenges the healthcare industry has faced during this past year have demonstrated the benefits of the agile approach MedSpeed deploys. Healthcare logistics should and must be a service that delivers strategic value.”

Laackman brings more than three decades of experience leading financial and information systems at large companies. Prior to MedSpeed, Laackman was Vice President of Global Finance at PureCircle. Her distinguished career includes executive roles at Sodexo, Shamrock Foods, The Kellogg Company and Kraft Foods. Laackman holds an MBA from Northwestern University and is a Certified Public Accountant. She received her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Accounting from Northern Illinois University, and serves on the board of directors for AgriBank and the Chicago Zoological Society.

MedSpeed has deep ties to The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. The business got its start as the final project for a New Venture Strategy course with the original seed of the idea coming from Crampton’s close friend and classmate, Everett Truitt. They entered the idea into the Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, New Venture Challenge. MedSpeed won the competition and Crampton changed his post-graduation plans to launch the company.

Now a market-leading provider of same-day transportation services to the healthcare industry, MedSpeed has grown from a Chicago-based startup to a national enterprise with over 140 hub operations across 29 states. Its client base includes 25 of the top 100 health systems in the country.

“I am honored to receive this award from my alma mater,” said Crampton. “Ultimately, this award recognizes the incredible MedSpeed team and our commitment to the mission of delivering health to the communities we serve.”

Before MedSpeed, healthcare executives rarely accounted for transportation operations when considering the major drivers of optimum performance. By transforming logistics from a cost center into a strategic asset, MedSpeed provides significant value by enabling better, more integrated care delivery.

Prior to launching MedSpeed, Crampton founded and nurtured a successful language-training business in Mexico City and credits that experience, his Chicago Booth education, and his continued engagement with the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation with providing a strong foundation for MedSpeed’s development.