12 Leading U.S. Healthcare Providers and Manufacturers/Suppliers Join Strategic Marketplace Initiative (SMI) in 2014

Scituate, MA (July 16, 2014):  The Strategic Marketplace Initiative (SMI®), a non-profit, member-driven consortium announced today that 12 new members have joined their organization thus far in 2014.  These new members join over 100 of the nation’s most influential Integrated Delivery Networks (IDNs) and manufacturers/suppliers in the healthcare supply chain industry.   The mission of SMI is to bring both providers and suppliers together, in a collaborative, non-competitive environment to help improve and shape a more efficient healthcare supply chain.  These 12 new members are: 

  • Centura Health: Ramy Hanna, Vice President, Supply Chain Management and Thomas Swapp, Director, Strategic Sourcing
  • Cook Children’s Health Care System:  Robert Gehrman, Senior Director Supply Chain
  • Essentia Health: Ryan Rotar, Executive Director Supply Chain
  • LeeSar: Robert Simpson, President & CEO
  • Premier Health: Tom Nash, System Vice President & Chief Supply Chain Officer
  • UAB Health System:  Bob Taylor, Associate Vice President, Supply Chain
  • Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare: Joseph Volpe, Vice President, Supply Chain
  • The Claflin Company:  Alexandra Caldwell, Sales Manager
  • Ecolab:    Angela Dillow, Global Vice President, Corporate Accounts, Healthcare and Brenda Valente, Vice President, NA Corporate Accounts, Healthcare
  • GE Healthcare: Catherine Estrampes, Vice President & General Manager, U.S. & Canada Central Zone and Rick Daniel, Executive Client Director
  • Henry Schein:  E.V. Clark, Vice President, Chief Marketing & Operations Officer
  • Siemens Healthcare:  Kevin Burns, Vice President Corporate Accounts and Michael Ungvary, Vice President, Strategic and Corporate Accounts

These new SMI members will work alongside other highly accomplished executives on initiative teams to create tools and resources to solve complex healthcare supply chain issues.  Teams have recently embarked on initiatives to explore topics including supply chain optimization, value analysis, accountable care organizations, vendor credentialing and others topics related to healthcare supply chain.  These tools and resources are available to the industry at no cost via the SMI website at:  http://www.smisupplychain.com/.

New SMI member Ryan Rotar from Essentia Health said, “It is extremely valuable to both me and my organization to be able to collaborate and learn from both provider and supplier members.  SMI facilitates this interaction in a non-competitive environment.  I am honored to be a member of this prestigious organization.”   Tom Hughes, SMI’s Executive Director said, “We are so pleased to have these 12 prominent organizations join SMI.  We look forward to the collaboration of all our members as we face challenges in the healthcare supply chain now and in the future.”