Editors’ Note

Previously, Donna Drummond served as the health system’s Chief Administrative Officer and Chief Procurement Officer. A certified public accountant, she joined North Shore-LIJ in 2002 as Vice President, Material Support Services. She was Associate Executive Director of non-clinical services at North Shore-LIJ’s tertiary campuses and then served as the health system’s Vice President of value analysis. Before coming to North Shore-LIJ, she held a number of positions with J.P. Morgan & Co., Inc. where she worked for 15 years after having been employed by Deloitte, Haskins & Sells. Drummond holds a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting from St. John’s University.

What are your particular areas of focus and how do you define your role at North Shore-LIJ?

My team and I focus primarily on corporate service areas where we have demonstrated competency for our Health System and that can be built into a business to service other entities. Recognizing that most hospitals have similar needs, we are always looking for new ways to maximize the quality and efficiency of our services.

For example, we have a very strong supply chain team that has achieved over $200 million in supply chain savings over the past few years. Our primary metric, supply cost as a percentage of net patient service revenue, is under 15 percent – a national benchmark. In 2008 we created our own Group Purchasing Organization (GPO), North Shore-LIJ Service Alliance, so that our pricing could benefit our members. We are also members of the Greater New York Hospital Association and the Premier GPO, so that our Health System and the North Shore-LIJ Service Alliance members can benefit from the best pricing. We have also built a dedicated distribution center that supplies our hospitals. This has resulted in overall reduced costs, increased efficiency, reduced waste, and improved emergency preparedness.

Sometimes, business opportunities result from efficiencies available to us due to our size. An example of this is Central Sterile. Historically, each of our hospitals managed their own central sterile operation. It became evident a few years ago that a significant capital investment would be required to replace aging equipment at each site. Instead of replacing 19 sets of sterilization equipment at a significant cost, we decided to investigate alternatives. This led to a joint venture with Synergy Health, an international provider of sterilization services to hospitals and manufacturers. Together, we formed Synergy Health Northeast to build the largest, off-site central sterile facility in the world. This facility will be located in Bethpage, Long Island and will service all North Shore-LIJ hospitals and ambulatory facilities. We expect to build additional Synergy Health Northeast facilities to service other entities in this region.

A number of years ago, we also created Vivo Health, a retail and specialty pharmacy. Our first location was in North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset. We initially focused on serving our hospital patients being discharged and our employees. Eventually, we added specialty pharmacy services for our HIV and Liver clinics. The specialty clinic model includes dedicated pharmacists in these clinics who answer medication questions and support patient care. We now have an additional retail pharmacy located in Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Medical Center and are planning other sites by the end of the year. We are also in the process of building a centralized pharmacy that will provide the repackaging needs of our hospitals to support bedside barcoding. This facility will also maintain a cache of critical drugs that are in short supply and house a compounding center to support the compounding needs of our hospitals.

As we continue to work on the efforts described above, we also continue to identify additional opportunities to improve other services utilized throughout the health system, keeping in mind that what works for us might be beneficial to others too.•