Latest / Taking The Supply Chain Pulse / Sixty Years Of Healthcare Supply Chain Wisdom

Transcript

Sixty Years Of Healthcare Supply Chain Wisdom · Taking The Supply Chain Pulse

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Taking the Supply Chain Pulse.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: We're thrilled to kick off season three with a twist.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: On today's episode, our beloved host and business development executive, Fred Kranz, takes the hot seat to share incredible stories and hard-earned wisdom from decades of navigating the complex world of supply chain and healthcare logistics.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't just a conversation.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's a masterclass in resilience, innovation, and relationship building.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Behind the mic is Executive Vice President and healthcare practice leader Tom Redding, steering the discussion with sharp insights and thought-provoking questions.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: So grab your headphones and join us as we launch season three with an episode that's equal parts inspiration and actionable advice.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Take it away, Tom.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate the opportunity to uh interview you after 60 years of being in the industry.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh certainly it's my pleasure.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I started in the industry before there was one.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, it's good to have you here.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh, you know, I got I've got uh two big anniversaries coming up in November.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my first anniversary is 60 years in healthcare, which has already uh happened because I started U.S.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Navy Hospital Core School back in 1965 and September of 65.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh in November I'll be turning 80 years old.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that's a long time.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's the new 70, right?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, 80 is the new 70.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I hope it's like the new 50, but new 50.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: You can only hope.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: So so fire away, brother.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: All right, man.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, hey, listen, we always talk about your your your wardrobe and what you're doing and what you're not wearing, and you know, and how people are gonna respond to it.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: So let's the first question is let's trace how your fashion style has evolved over the years.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, that's funny that people remember me for my mainly my pants.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: But um, you know, I started out my first uh my first uniform in healthcare was as Navy Corpsman, so I wore a wore a U.S.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: military outfit.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh after I got out of the uh military, I was a nursing assistant at Baptist in Miami, so I wore regular nursing assistant attire.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And probably after seven years, I finally got into management.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: And for the most part of my career, I was a pretty conservatively dressed guy, uh, wearing suits and ties to work and looking like every other person around me until I think it was uh 2014.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was in Miami with a friend of mine, Tom Sisk, and we were doing a uh project at uh uh UM U Miama Health, and we went to uh visit them, and it was right across the street from the university, and we went to the bookstore, and Tom said, Hey, look at those pants.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: You should get those.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I did, and that started everything.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: First the University of Miami pants, and then after that it sort of uh it sort of blew up.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh basically I'm I'm a pretty I'm a pretty conservative guy.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't really dress outlandishly, but most people would not know that.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: But that's how it is.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been great for my career, I gotta say.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh people knew me before I started dressing like that, but a whole bunch of people, a whole bunch of more people know me now, that's for sure.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, people respond very positively about you know what you're wearing when I take pictures with you and all those type of things.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: So just maybe share um how many different types of pants do you have there?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: How many different color combinations and styles?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, of the of the loud pants, I got about 35 pair.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, that that gets me over.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: I buy new ones all the time because you got to rotate the inventory.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I I learned that uh you wear the same thing two or three times and it gets old.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I've got I've got a lot of them.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: And and what's interesting is every time I go to a meeting, uh, the last day when I come home and I'm in the airport, I'm wearing the pants I wore that day.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: I get stopped in the airport as much as I get stopped anywhere else.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: People want to take pictures with it.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And all it was was to get people over themselves.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everybody is so uptight and so proper and everything.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: The pants were able to break down barriers, and it's worked.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I and you know, I'm I'm okay with it.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's good stuff.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: No, I think you said you kind of went from a very conservative, you know, approach to you know, maybe a little more, you know, call it outlandish as you got later in life.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: And um maybe let's just take a step back.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe uh maybe the next question is maybe take go back in time when you were um you think about cell phones and email and things today, but maybe back when you were kind of etching things in stone and you know building the the Egyptian pyramids, maybe we can start maybe start there and kind of work our way forward.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: But um let's talk about maybe uh I don't what you want to call it.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, when you started before cell phones and and smartphones, what was the quality of communication back then?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, obviously things now it's more instantaneous, but how would you consider the quality from maybe the beginning of your career to how things are now?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's funny because when I started, we didn't have computers.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: So if I had to, if I had to write an inner office memo to someone, I had to type it.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I was a terrible typist, so I had to uh correct, I had to have that self-correcting stuff in order to clear up my mistakes.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: But uh what was really interesting is back in the 70s, most hospitals were standalone community hospitals.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: The whole supply chain operation, as we call it now, was much simpler.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: You're basically taking care of one building when you get right down to it, the hospital, or one set of buildings on one campus.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so you knew a lot of people and you communicated with them directly.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: You either go to uh their office and talk with them face to face or call them up on the phone inside.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh when it came to the vendors, I was director of central processing and distribution of Baptist, which meant I was also responsible for what they called then the New Products Committee, which has morphed into value analysis over the years.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd be talking directly to the sales reps.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: The sales reps would be coming in every week.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh communication wasn't a problem.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Today I think you can communicate there there's a a big advantage and a big sort of a uh uh uh a um drawback from today's instantaneous consulting.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you get ticked off and your fingers can fly over the keyboard real fast, you can send messages out to the whole world that you probably should have uh thought about before you hit send.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's one thing.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it was you that said uh it's hard to uh to uh tell sarcasm in an email.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, I found I found the other thing about that.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: I've had so many people I've talked to that I've worked with say, Did you hear that?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Did you see the tone of that email?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going, there is no tone.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's black characters on a white background.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Any tone is something that you apply and the way you read it.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: You read it from your your perspective.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think it's I think from a business perspective and and being able to get instant response to problems, uh, nothing compares to today.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: You can get emails out to suppliers if there's a if there's a problem with a shortage on a product or whatever, and they get they get information like uh two or three days more quickly than if you had to send them a letter in the old days.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: But even in the old days, um I relied on telephone conversations an awful lot.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's better today, it's different today.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um both both eras had their pluses and minuses, I guess.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: So it sounds like more of it's the speed at which you're communicating now than maybe maybe years ago.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that sounds like there's also you know there's a lot of interpretation, you know, with tone and email and all the things that go along with it, you know, especially if you have how many different generations in the in the workforce and how people interpret it or how they respond to those communications is always you know for demand.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: You can you can tie people together real quickly.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like this morning, I um we have a new employee here at St.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Ange, and he's going to attend a conference with me, and I was able to hook him up with the people that run the conference by just a simple intro, boom, boom, boom, boom.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: And in five minutes, let five minutes the two of them had hooked up and they were planning, they were planning what they needed to do to get him registered much more quickly and more effectively than in the old days, that's for sure.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, that's fair.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I guess maybe let's just maybe go the it's always easy to go back and say, hey, if I can talk to myself, you know, I was 25, you know, what would I do?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: I guess what would you tell yourself, you know, knowing you've you know got a long long career and all the things you've seen and done, I guess what what would you tell yourself you go back and tell your 25-year-old self, what would you tell them?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I go to 27 because that's when I first became a director at Baptist.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, there you go.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I was um I was a young guy, and I was from a small town in upstate New York.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: I graduated from the University of Miami with a history major.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was working at a large hospital as a director.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't really even understand how how uh important that was.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's pretty young age to be a director at a place that big.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I was always always uh uh very um into being right and and very uh um much into um just being on all the time.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was always a contest, and I had to win, and I was I was a pain in the butt, really.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and if I could talk to myself back then, I would say, calm down, listen to your elders, join in.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to win all the time, you don't have to prove you're right all the time.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think it I think it impeded me.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: It helped me in many respects, but it I behaved that way out of uh lack of confidence about who I was.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: I just had no uh didn't have enough confidence to uh be myself, so I just was always on the uh competitive side.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's fair.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: I yeah, I guess the maybe go even further, I guess um over the course of your career, who who made the biggest impact?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, obviously, you know, you said you started at have a certain mindset, and obviously it's changed over time and you know how I interact with you over the last five years and maybe all the perspective you share with me.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: But what what would you say?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: Who's who was the biggest kind of impact to your career or you feel like the industry?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when I first started in um healthcare leadership, the uh uh man named Rusty Slave, who was the controller slash CFO at Baptist Hospital in Miami, he was uh he's a little short guy from Kent, Ohio, red-hatted guy who'd been a rear gunner on a B-17 in World War II, who'd gotten shot down over Frankfurt, Germany, gotten beat up by the uh uh townsfolks when he survived and landed on the ground because the Americans were bombing him, made it through three years in a uh German prisoner of war camp, came back, um, went to Kent State University, and his wife told him she was gonna help him uh work his way through college.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: She got pregnant immediately, quit work.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: He had uh he had uh uh he ended up, I guess, working for one of the rubber companies in Akron, ended up in Indonesia, got captured by the by the insurrectionists twice.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this guy had gone through all kinds of things.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Nicest man in the world.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: He was like a father to me.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: And he saw that competitiveness about me.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: And one day after I'd gotten into an argument with one of the physicians at breakfast over uh Ted Williams' lifetime batting average versus Babe Ruth's lifetime batting average.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: The doctor said uh Babe Ruth had a lifetime batting average of 0.344, and I said, No, no, that was Ted Williams, Babe Ruth at 342.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I I knew I was right, because I'm always right about baseball.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he uh he left and Rusty said, Fred, come down to my office.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so I went down to his office and he closed the door.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: So son, he says, You're a very smart kid.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: He said, You know more about more things than than anybody I know.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: But you're not helping yourself by having to be right all the time.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: That what did you gain from the fact that you were right with that doctor in that conversation?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: And what you did was you probably embarrassed him and lost his respect.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And he was um he had a really fantastic impact on me because he he was able to tolerate me where a lot of people weren't.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: And and he was able to be patient with me.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, that stuff s uh fit stuck right uh with me.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: And in my uh in my professional career uh from the health from the healthcare performance side, I would say that Tom Hughes of Concepts and Healthcare uh probably had uh had uh uh another uh impact on me.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: He probably has produced more people that are in the bellwether league than anyone else.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Just a just an excellent supply chain leader and uh and a great um a great uh person to uh have had as a mentor.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: No, it sounds good, Fred.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, I mean there's certainly a number of folks that impact your life and kind of shape you and kind of change your perspective over time.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: I guess maybe kind of shift gears a little bit and think about, you know, there's a lot of lot of discussions around innovation in the industry, but what would you say is the kind of the greatest innovation you've experienced in healthcare over your last 60 years?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I thought about that the other day.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think the first open heart surgery or heart replacement surgery took place in like 1965.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Or there somewhere thereabouts, South Africa, I think is where it took place.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when I started.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can imagine all the stuff that's happened since then, I mean how do you how do you pick something?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about, you know, if you mean in healthcare, uh so many things have happened, it's unbelievable.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you mean in uh supply chain, that's a different thing.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: For me personally, the the thing that I thought I never thought about it at the time, but I think you know I was a corpsman in Vietnam with Marines.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: I was a I was a combat medic.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the single biggest innovation in that war, the thing that saved the most lives, was not any of us corpsmen who did who did our job.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: We s we did our job, but it was it was logistics, it was the helicopter.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: We got people on a helicopter immediately after they were wounded, and that helicopter took them to the next place in the in the chain, the care chain, if you will, not the supply chain.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: It would take them to uh uh a field hospital, like a mass unit, and then from there they would be stabilized and taken to another place, ultimately being moved either back to the states or treated and and moved back to duty.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not a it's not a it's not a healthcare instrument.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's not uh but it was the singular most important instrument in um savings people's lives.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: In in Vietnam 98.3 percent, I think it is, of the people who were wounded but didn't die they survived.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason they survived was because of the logistics system, the fact that people could be treated and could be could be taken to the next appropriate place uh in a timely fashion and get treated again and ultimately make it back to uh to good health.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: But um in in hell in our supply chain, I would say the biggest innovation for us was the ability to um gather large uh quantities of accurate data and then be able to uh turn that into actionable um actionable items.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's good stuff, Fred.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean it's it's I hate to say it's more of the things that that you don't see that have the bigger impact than the ones that are right in front of your face.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, so there's like you said, about the logistics and all the things that go with it.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: So thanks for sharing that, Fred.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Before we dive back in, you may be asking yourself, is my supply chain future ready?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: See notch company, we don't just optimize logistics.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: We engineer smarter, leaner, and more resilient systems from end to end, from manufacturing to retail to healthcare.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Our experts bring decades of experience and cutting-edge strategies to transform your operations.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Visit and discover how we're shaping the future of supply chain one solution at a time.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe just shifting, maybe talk a little more about kind of defining moments, you know, for your career, maybe one to think about is what was the most impactful moment in your career and why.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, I can't really tell the one that was the most impactful uh uh in my career, but I'm gonna tell the one that was second most impactful.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds good.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um every you know, we all come to a point where you have to put up or shut up uh about who we are.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I was working at a large system in the Midwest.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: I was running the supply chain, and the chief operating officer there had asked me to put out an RFP for uh uh to change potentially our group purchasing organization.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: He told me which group uh purchasing organizations to send it to.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: He told me to keep it on the down low, and and I did, and he told me not to send it to our our current GPO because we already knew what we were paying for things with them.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I did exactly as he said, signed two NDAs, uh saying I would not uh release the information or share the information inappropriately, and uh we compared against uh three GPOs and um and added in our own what we were uh purchasing uh off contract with our own uh internal operations, and we found uh uh potential winner, took all the all the information to my boss who was a CFO, and then all of a sudden there was this meeting called from the CEO and our current GPO.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: They were coming in to uh we were gonna sign we're gonna sign with them and we're gonna commit to them, and they had come in third in the in the uh um analysis.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I show up at eight o'clock, the CEO's there, my boss isn't there yet, and I'm with my director of purchasing.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: She is with me.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, this is a this is a right or wrong thing.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: I see these people from the from the uh GPO, I see the CEO, and he wants to start the meeting, and I said, Hey, my boss isn't here yet, I'm not gonna start until he gets here.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so we waited.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: And when we came there, um they presented figures that were totally false as far as what the pricing could have been, because GPOs always uh would uh quote you their best price, whether you could uh get that price or not.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: And every time they would do that, I'd say this is not right.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the CEO would interject, well, they said if we if if this is true, they then this.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: I said, No.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh his name was Leo.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Leo, you're wrong.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's not true.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: And he did it again, and I said it again, and by the third time, I said, Look, Leo, before you say it again, you said it, you've been wrong twice on this, you're gonna be wrong the third time, and so don't even bother to say it.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: These are the facts.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: And he was really mad at me.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And when we got done, I uh I I um thought I was gonna get fired, but my my purchasing director, she was very proud that we'd I stood up for her and them and in the process.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: We went back to my boss and I said, Hey, you realize I signed two NDAs, I'm on the line for this price, this pricing having been shared.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't stand up for me at all during the meeting, and you told me to do you guys told me to do this.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I said, uh I I I can't I'm not gonna tolerate that kind of behavior from you guys.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: I expect better.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: I I thought I was gonna get fired, and I didn't.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: And and the fact that I did what I was supposed to do, I did what was right, um, and took a chance of getting fired and didn't really had a big impact.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was a uh fresh moment for me.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: So after that point, I was I was never afraid to stand up to people again.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: No, that's an that's an incredible example, Fred, because you know, I you know, we work with a lot of folks around the country, and you know, you get different perspectives.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say more times than not, folks won't put their neck out there to really address these things or just let things happen.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, it's a it's a very admirable story.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe let's talk a little bit about um can shift in a tad bit here.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: Is let's talk about your your biggest accomplishment the course of your career.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard, maybe hard to define one specific thing, but you know, is there something you would say, hey, this kind of no, I think that I've been I've been very fortunate, Tom.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you go to meetings with me, and you know that over the years I've met a lot of folks.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but uh a couple years ago I made a list of all the people that had worked for me when I was director or when I was in management, that had um reached positions of director or above, that I'd sort of helped, and I had a list of over 30 people there.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'm um and I'm always humbled when people come up to me at meetings and say, Hey, you helped me get this job I didn't even know I had.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I think one of the things that we're supposed to do uh as professionals as and as human beings is help other people if we can.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: And um and I take pride in in uh doing my best to help people that I respect and trust and have you know have faith in their competence.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't refer people for jobs just because I know 'em, that's for sure.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: But but um I feel good about that.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's one been one of the the the one thing that I can hold my head up high about, I think.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's good stuff, Red.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_02: How about uh your biggest regret?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, and in healthcare I don't have any regret.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I I I can't I can't think of anything that I would have done differently at any time that would have caused a better outcome than than what has happened the way things have just unfolded.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: But in my personal life, I have two times that I really wished I had done something different.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: The first time was in 1966, in like January of 1966, I was at the Naval Hospital in Philadelphia, and I went to a uh I went to a uh Philadelphia 76ers versus Cincinnati Royals game, and right there in the lobby before went into convention hall was Wilton Norman Chamberlain.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I had a chance to say hello to Wilt Chamberlain, and I choked.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: I stand there looking at my hero, and I didn't have the guts to say hello to him.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the second time was uh in the 70s when I was a Baptist.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: And remember, in the 70s, not everybody had answering machines.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I didn't have one, uh I didn't have one at at home until I don't know, maybe it was even late 70s, early 80s, but um, on one weekend, uh my friend Vic Arono lived next door to John Underwood.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: John Underwood's uh big sports writer who wrote uh uh My Turn at Bat with Ted Williams and another book with Ted Williams.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Ted lived down in the Keys.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: I go to work on a Monday morning, and and uh Vic says, Hey Freddie, where were you this weekend?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Oh, I was doing something.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Well, you know, Ted Williams came up from the Keys to work with John uh Underwood on the book, and I was over there and I got talking about you.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Told him how much you knew about baseball, and Ted Williams says, Well, Jesus, let's call the guy up.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: He said, We called your house all day, and no one was there.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that's another one of those things that I missed.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: I would have given anything to talk to Ted Williams, but that's it, you know.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: That's good stories, good stories there, Fred.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, I mean, you got a lot of a lot of good stories there, a lot of good examples that others can kind of learn from.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: I guess, you know, I uh you and I talk about this at you know a decent amount, and I'm always impressed at the energy you have.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you might say, hey, I'm turning 80 in November, and um I'm always impressed at the energy and enthusiasm and just the just the overall communication you have with the team.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I guess for me, it's you know, one of the questions was, you know, why not retire and enjoy life?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what would you um again, you could say, okay, well, I enjoy being involved with people, I enjoy the company, I enjoy the industry.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: I guess, you know, why not retire and enjoy life with your family?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I I think you've answered the question for me.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think that question came from my buddy Bill Shehee that I worked with at Concepts with Healthcare.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, Sheehe was a guy that's been married to one woman and uh saved his money all his life, and and he he is uh fiscally comfortable.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: I have I haven't done quite that well in the in some of those respects, but I really enjoy what I do.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I want to stay continually relevant.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: I still think I am.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: I still think I'm bringing value to uh to the industry and value to uh the folks around me, and and I honestly believe that if I were to retire, um I would probably waste away in a matter of weeks.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: I just I there's nothing else out there that uh sort of lights my fire like uh my like my gym.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Healthcare's been my whole life.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like being a gym rat.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: I've been in the gym all my life, and uh you get used to it, and that's that's where you want to be.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm I'm very appreciative of St.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Ange for um hiring me in my old age and keeping me around and and and letting me have the ability to to write articles and talk to people and and still help grow a business.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know what I would do if I if I retired.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: I I I would be lost immediately, to tell you the truth.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, I I understand, Brad.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we all kind of go through that and think about what the future looks like.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I mean, we certainly appreciate everything you've done and certainly appreciate the just the the interaction on the podcast and just you know staying connected with with the industry.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I I guess maybe maybe I know there's not a question, I know I went through the kind of the kit questions that we received from others, but you know, just thinking about the last 60 years, I guess if if you could say, hey, and you could fast forward 20 years from now, I guess how would you are there one or two things you feel like, hey, the industry really, the healthcare supply chain really needs to do these two or three things, like to really advance the ball, I guess.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: What would it be in your mind?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you could fast forward 20 years from now and say, hey, this is where we want to be.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I I think there are a couple things.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, unless uh unless something drastic uh drastically changes, we're still going to be a country without a without a um an official health care system.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: We have a healthcare industry, but and we have about 6,200 uh hospitals out there, uh half of them operating independently, half of them under IDNs.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um the bigger the systems, the broader the uh base of delivery, the more difficult it becomes.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we're gonna have to we're gonna have to continue to to develop professionally educated supply chain folks to uh to run these more sophisticated systems.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's number one.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: But we've also, and I think the the danger of just have of simply having a supply chain education without uh uh a healthcare hands-on understanding of of how the industry you're in works uh hurts the people that try to come in from the outside.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think that the biggest advantage I ever had was the seven years of uh of being a caregiver that I had before I had one day of management.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: I really understood how things work.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that um as we develop these programs, I would like to see the healthcare supply chain programs develop with uh sort of classes in actual healthcare so that the folks that are in those classes can see the the environment that they're that their supply chain works in.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um technology is gonna continue to increase and improve.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna be able to we're gonna be able to process uh data faster, better, more accurately, so we'll be able to really apply um best supply chain practices to a chaotic supply chain that is healthcare.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's gonna continue.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I I just think we're gonna get think we're gonna get better leaders.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: There are gonna be there are gonna be fewer organizations in healthcare as the idea, the big ideans continue to grow, but they're all gonna be they're all gonna be operationally better, I think.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well, sounds good, Brad.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate that.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um maybe my last question for you is you know, just thinking about um all the generations that are in the call, the workforce or you know, you know, across the across the globe, I guess are there one or two things that You would you would share with the younger generation, you know, you could say which generation, but just the generations in general.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: I guess is there anything that you would say, hey, earlier in your career, early 20s, early 30s, I guess what would you tell them?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like what would they do?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: What should they think about?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: How should they approach you know their work?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I tell them a lot of things.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, uh, I have been happen I've been uh lucky to have started my career and ending my career working for excellent organizations.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: Working first with Baptist Hospital in Miami and now with St.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Ange.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um you don't find places like this everywhere, okay?
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: I would say that uh for young folks, take a good look at where you're working and and if it's worth worthy of being appreciated, uh appreciate it.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the second thing uh I would I I think there's a I think it's incumbent upon all of us.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's generally five or five or so generations in a in any company uh for each of us to learn how the other generation thinks and and and acts and and uh to uh interact appropriately.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I'm amazed at how bright some of the some of the young folks are, but also how naive they are about other things.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a it's a two-way thing and and and they're not surprised at how stupid I am about uh technology, but I've got some pretty good insights about things that they don't have.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: And if I were talking to the young folks, I would say this that you can the the you know the the best the best people come from are those that were raised right by their families, okay?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: And when you enter um any industry, any business, you're entering a new family, and the folks that are there, that have already established themselves, that are operating uh effectively within those organizations, they're your they're your uh they're your elders.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: And and if you could do anything, it would be eagerly eagerly engage and embrace those folks to learn as much from them as you can, because they can teach you and you can teach them.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's good stuff, Fred.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, I I appreciate everything.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, obviously, there's we could probably talk for hours about you know your career and all the great things you've done and being inducted into the into the Bellwether League, and certainly it's a it's an incredible you know recognition and honor.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, and certainly uh my experience and working with you, Fred, it's been tremendous.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: I've learned a tremendous amount from you.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: So again, I would just advocate for you know others that are in the industry and to be able to connect and stay connected with you know everybody you know along that continuum of from somebody earlier in their career to folks that are about to retire.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot to learn from each other.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: And want to thank Fred again for uh joining the podcast, his own podcast, and giving me the chance to uh interview him on his 60-year career.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: So want to thank everybody and have a good day.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, folks.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's all for today.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for joining.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: And as always, don't forget to subscribe and connect with us online where you can find all of our episodes.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a topic you would like to discuss or want to be a guest on the show, you can reach out to Fred directly at F C R A N S at S T O N G E dot com.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: See you next time.