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Jerry VanVactor, DHA, CMRP, FAHRMM

Military Candidate

  

Dr. Jerry D. VanVactor
Health Care Logistician
US Army Medical Service Corps
1330-B Normandy Court
Fort Wainwright, Alaska 99703
jerry.d.vanvactor@gmail.com 

 

 

 

 

 

Background

Member of AHRMM for 9 years
17 years of experience in the resource and materials management field

Certifications

Certified Materials & Resource Professional (CMRP)
AHRMM Fellow (FAHRMM)

Current Position and Responsibilities

Type of Organization: Military/VA/Government 
3 years in current position

Responsible for: As a health care logistics manager of an outpatient health network, I serve as the primary logistics consultant for a garrison-based regional chain of command concerning support and sustainment of approximately 50 medical, dental and veterinary health care facilities. Part of my duties involve the development, coordination, and implementation of command-level logistics policies, procedures and measurements pertaining to materiel readiness, acquisition, and supply chain management valued at approximately $50 million in annual procurements, capital equipment purchases, and services contracts valued at over $3 million per annum. I assist in the management of reengineering and repositioning initiatives throughout organizational transformation, process improvement initiatives, and project management related to health care supply chain efficiency and facilities project management. I also assist in the facilitation of the region’s safety committee, chair the organization's space utilization committee, aid in organizational Joint Commission preparation, emergency preparedness committee, and oversee parts of the efforts of the standardization committee. My duties require the direct oversight of five branch chiefs and the daily activities of 30 employees.

Service to AHRMM National

2008-10 – Issues and Legislative Committee(Disaster Mgmt Issues)
2010 - Present – AHRMM Fellow Committee
2007-10 – Material Management in Health Care book task force (Committee Chair, Contributing Author/Editor)

AHRMM Annual Conferences and Leadership
Training Conferences

AHRMM Annual Conference – San Diego, CA – 2007
Medical Logistics Management Conference, Garmisch, Germany – 2007
AHRMM Annual Conference, San Antonio, TX – 2008 
Medical Service Corps Symposium, Sonthofen, Germany – 2008
Theater Medical Logistics Conference, Bagram, Afghanistan – 2009
AHRMM Annual Conference – Denver, CO – 2010 
Medical Service Corps Symposium, Nurnberg, Germany – 2010
Post-graduate Professional Short Course (Medical Logistics), Denver, CO – 2010
Medical Service Corps Symposium, Garmisch, Germany – 2011
Quarterly Logistics Training Conference (Facilitator), Bavaria, Germany – 2007-Present

Why you are seeking this position?

Some of the keys to being a successful supply chain/logistics manager are personal and professional growth, networking, collaborative relationship building, and mentorship. AHRMM affords each member these opportunities through access to email distribution lists, conferences, literature, studies, and committee memberships that allow each individual to interact collaboratively with members throughout an aggressively dynamic, evolving health care industry. By becoming a member of the board, I can provide insight into a genre of our industry that is specific to supporting America’s Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen - we, as military health care providers, do not take our job lightly. With over 20 years experience in uniformed military service I have seen multiple levels of leadership throughout my career. This becomes critical in the design of programs specific to retaining, recruiting, and continuing activities related to health care logistics. I am experienced in establishing and nurturing Joint/International relationships and can leverage this skillset to help AHRMM in the development of programs. As the military becomes more tri-service centric, having knowledge of these types of processes will become vital and can assist the AHRMM BOD in providing for the needs of the military’s health network professionals - not as Army, Navy, and Air Force para- and professionals, but as the military health system. By being directly associated with forward thinking, team players, such as the AHRMM BOD, my own personal development will be enhanced for future endeavors within and outside the military.

How can you advance AHRMM's mission to advance healthcare through supply chain excellence?

Alone; I cannot. Well defined strategic planning, vision, goals, and objectives are principle tenets of organizational success, but those tenets must be shared throughout a leadership chain. By ensuring those principles are communicated among health care logistics professionals, multiple aspects of effective, efficient supply chain management practices can be communicated to facilitators of federal fiduciary processes. Mentorship needs to be communicated to more junior health care logisticians and AHRMM can serve as a platform to recruit and retain talent within a dynamic industry. A message of “health care starts with logistics” must be propagated among multidiscipline stakeholders to instill the importance of having well-trained, talented supply chain professionals among health care staffs.

Identify 3 - 5 strategic priorities you think AHRMM should undertake and your reasons for identifying them as important.

1. Disaster preparedness - more aggressive involvement by health care logisticians - as Jim Rush continuously advocates, “America’s health care system is not ready for a major disaster.” As logisticians, we need to get involved in disaster planning and stop thinking of the isolated types of events for which planners tend to focus. Along with planning for resilience and continuity of operations comes a broader scope of planning for the evacuation of patients, facility concerns, stakeholder relationships, communications challenges, re-supply activity, accessibility to facilities during crises, and so forth. Health care operations can cease to operate if they do not have the supplies and equipment to do so. Logisticians must get involved.

2. Development of intellectual capital related to health care logistics management - we need to develop a consistent message across the industry about the involvement of logisticians in health care operations. There is a significant shortage in professional literature concerning health care logistics and supply chain operations; albeit, we have some very intelligent people working among our “ranks”. We need to capitalize, leverage this intellectual capital and encourage people to start publishing their thoughts to further our message.

3. Physician-health care administration relationships - markedly, this will always pose a challenge for the health care industry. Communicating the importance of logistics involvement and providing clarity to physicians about the impact logistics processes have on business operations may aid in helping the clinical side of health care more clearly understand the business side of health care.

Identify your personal and professional qualities that will be valuable in the position for which you are being considered.

Personally, I am a man of integrity and try to maintain a position that just because a person is subordinate does not make them inferior. Too often I watch as junior staff members are treated as something less than their leader because the leader does not take the time to learn qualities that juniors can bring to a scenario. I am loyal, believe in my sense of duty to an organization in which I belong, and serve selflessly among other’s efforts for success. I have experienced leadership at multiple levels of responsibility and can apply many lessons that I have learned throughout my career to multivariate situations. I have spent much of my career operating in very stressful, austere conditions and can adapt to many challenges with little advance warning. I am a Doctor of Health Administration, certified materials resource professional, Fellow, and a Lean Six Sigma (Black Belt) professional. Throughout my career, I have also been involved in emergency preparedness/management through a background that includes law enforcement, EMS, and medical experience. I have been involved (varying degrees of experience) in health care logistics for over 17 years with my range of experience including Operating Room, surgical department, medical platoon leader, Army division level medical operations center, company command, combat theater, and international positions and responsibilities.

How will you use these qualities to benefit AHRMM, the Board, and the members?

Health care is a business and effective logistics processes and operations contribute to success. To not fully understand, appreciate this concept is, in my opinion, naïve at best and can be indicative of the types of isolative management for which health care is renowned. The logistics mission and message needs to be brought to the forefront of most health care planning so other members of our industry can gain an appreciation for our involvement/impact on other processes. AHRMM should be broadcast as a successful, sustainable, professional organization that ranks just as high as other professional associations within health care. Communicating this message is one key to our continued success. The board needs to continue to encourage its members to publish, work with significant initiatives that could impact the future of health care logistics management, speak in fora outside AHRMM events, and carry the AHRMM flag as they do so. Finally, we need to stop emphasizing our role as just supply chain managers. We are professional logisticians who handle a wide gamut of responsibilities that stretch far beyond a perceptibly hospital-centric industry. The BOD should encourage health care logisticians to collectively realize a better understanding of our involvement in multiple facets of health care operations.

What do you expect to be your single, greatest contribution to AHRMM as a Board member?

Education, knowledge, and collaborative communication skills. As a board member, I would want to increase the amount of education provided to the military community. To date, I receive little information about what AHRMM is doing for the military community. This should be addressed and attended to throughout the term of service with the BOD.

Describe one transformational experience in your professional life you have been involved with and what you have learned from this experience.

I have been involved in several significant transformational experiences throughout my career; it is difficult to isolate only one. However, one of the more notable, recent experiences in which I was involved was the transition of national-level authority of the hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan from a NATO partner to the U.S. military in 2009. Throughout this endeavor, I was able to serve, for one year, as the U.S. project manager in the construction of a $35 million brick and mortar hospital for coalition civilians and International Soldiers fighting in a wartime theater of operations. Along with the construction, I assisted in the development of health care operations, logistics processes, and staffing models associated with infrastructure development for coalition health care processes; the task was not U.S. specific. As the project progressed, my role involved a variety of aspects related to the physical plant design, campus layout, equipping, maintaining, and movement control around and within the facility. I worked, daily, beside members of the United Kingdom, Canada, Netherlands, German, French, and other foreign military services. At end state, national military authority was transitioned from Canada to the U.S. and out of a plywood hospital into a 56-bed state of the art facility. Key learning points throughout the experience involved a new appreciation for cultural differences in health care, communication challenges in a large-scale project, the importance of mitigation plans for crises, and patience when junior staff members may not fully comprehend the task, purpose, and intent behind a leader’s decisions. The experience was all possible through the concerted efforts of an exceptional team of professionals that I had the honor and privilege to serve among.