Like most organizations, IDN Summit and Expo has many goals. Of course, we want to put on the most informative and inspirational conferences possible. With your help, we are continually enhancing our Summit content, tailoring it ever more closely to fit your expressed needs.
But we also know that it’s not enough. With everything that is going on in healthcare today, the people we serve need more; more information, more insights, more opportunities to learn and share best practices and more data on which to base future decisions.
I can summarize those needs in one word—community. People who work in the healthcare supply chain often feel like they are in silos, isolated from the C-suite, clinical departments and even other aspects of their organizations’ supply chain. Without support from peers across the country, it is easy to believe you are “up against it,” that you are alone in facing the stiff challenges that today’s healthcare marketplace provides. We want to foster a greater sense that those who work in the healthcare supply chain share common challenges and opportunities. We seek to become a year-round resource for this community, a place where everyone can go to share ideas and information and to feel more connected.
The most visible manifestation of this new approach is our new website: We have redesigned the site to provide more options for interaction in our community. It has more regular features, including one called Inside the Supply Chain. There we’ll be providing research, analysis and links to important content. Soon we will update the site to include our Peer-to-Peer Research Reports and summaries of the discussions on those topics held during the Spring Summit in Orlando. We hope that you find this new site better fits your needs. And yes, your feedback is essential, so call us (859-523-5701) or email us to tell us what you think.
We are also putting together our second Healthcare Supply Chain Survey, to be administered in the summer. Twice a year, we will be asking executives who oversee aspects of the supply chain at integrated delivery networks and health systems what they think about key supply chain issues. Earlier this year, we issued our first report on the top areas of strategic importance. The anecdotes that respondents gave us revealed how many of them had the same challenges, underscoring again that need for a sense of community.
We’re also pulling together our fall agenda based on feedback from participants in Orlando. We so appreciate the comments we have received to date, and invite everyone who hasn’t replied to provide us with more. Please click here to take our survey. All of this information is crucial as we look to answer the need for community in the healthcare supply chain.