As supply chain disruptions continue to challenge hospitals, many health systems have focused on building larger inventories and expanding warehouse capacity to protect themselves from shortages.
But Mike Hopkins, vice president of supply chain at Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine, sees resilience differently.
Rather than relying primarily on stockpiles, he believes the future of healthcare supply chain resilience will depend on how quickly organizations can gather information, make decisions and respond to disruptions.
“Northwestern’s approach to it has been more around how do we become smarter at making faster decisions,” Mr. Hopkins said on the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast.”
The strategy comes as supply chain leaders face what he described as one of the most volatile operating environments in years. Rising costs tied to tariffs and fluctuating oil prices, ongoing product shortages and rapid technological change are all creating pressure across healthcare operations.
“Supply disruptions in healthcare have always been bad,” Mr. Hopkins said. “I would say they’re as bad as they’ve ever been right now.”
For Northwestern Medicine, the response has centered on visibility and transparency rather than simply accumulating inventory. Mr. Hopkins said the ability to identify disruptions early, evaluate alternatives and coordinate quickly with clinicians is becoming a greater competitive advantage than warehousing products for future use.
When a disruption occurs, supply chain teams must assess the scope of the problem, identify substitute products, work with clinical teams on acceptable alternatives and secure inventory before supplies become constrained. Organizations that can move through that process quickly are often better positioned than those relying solely on stored inventory, he said.
Part of that effort involves greater collaboration across the industry. Northwestern Medicine was among the early participants in the Healthcare Industry Resilience Collaborative, a group that brings together health systems, manufacturers and distributors to improve transparency around supply disruptions.
Mr. Hopkins said those partnerships help reduce the panic buying and hoarding behaviors that can worsen shortages when organizations receive limited information about upcoming disruptions. More transparency, he argued, often leads to more rational purchasing decisions.
The next evolution of resilience may come from technology.
AI is becoming a growing area of focus for Northwestern’s supply chain team, though Mr. Hopkins said its greatest near-term value is unlikely to be replacing workers. Instead, he sees AI helping supply chain teams work more efficiently by automating research, surfacing recommendations and accelerating decision-making.
“The biggest advantage it’s going to give supply chain for a while is it’s going to allow us to do more with what we have today,” he said.
That could allow supply chain departments to expand their reach into areas where many organizations currently lack bandwidth, including pharmacy, laboratory services and other ancillary operations. Rather than increasing headcount, AI may help existing teams take on additional responsibilities and create more value across the enterprise, according to Mr. Hopkins.
The technology could also help address one of healthcare’s most persistent operational challenges: waste.
Mr. Hopkins pointed to operating room preference cards as an example. Unused supplies, equipment and pharmaceuticals frequently need to be tracked, returned or reprocessed after procedures, creating labor costs and operational inefficiencies that extend well beyond the cost of the products themselves. AI-driven recommendations could help health systems optimize those preference cards more quickly and reduce unnecessary waste throughout the process.
Looking further ahead, however, Mr. Hopkins said the biggest change may not be technological at all.
As supply chains become more data-driven and AI-enabled, he expects workforce capabilities to evolve alongside them. Future supply chain teams will require stronger analytical and technology-focused skill sets, making internal talent development increasingly important.
“The organizations that have really embedded themselves with a program that grows their own employees internally,” he said, “I think that is going to be sort of the secret sauce in the next three to five years.”
For Mr. Hopkins, resilience ultimately comes down to a combination of people, data and speed. In an environment where disruptions have become a constant reality, the organizations that can process information fastest and act decisively may be the ones best positioned to weather whatever comes next.
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