Our “Procurement Experts on CPO Rising” series continues today with an excerpt from my 2021 episode of the Procurement Rising Podcast – Tom Cassidy, CPO at Bayada (click to listen to the full interview). Note that this excerpt has been edited for readability.

Tom Cassidy, Bayada

Andrew Bartolini: Let’s talk more specifically about home healthcare, which is a highly competitive industry. Give us a little background on the industry and its competitive nature. And how your procurement organization is impacting competition today.

Tom Cassidy: The home health industry is a very loaded marketplace with several small providers, like mom and pops that are in their communities taking care of people, all the way to very large providers like Bayada. Bayada Home Healthcare is a $1.6 billion nonprofit health care company, and one of the largest nonprofits.

One of our unique attributes is that we are a full-service provider, meaning that we have nine specialty practices that deliver everything from highly skilled pediatric care to assistive care, and home health aide services to adult skilled and hospice and palliative care services. So, we cover the full spectrum of the home healthcare market.

And 100% of our services are delivered in the home, which during the pandemic became a focus of attention for the country. People realized that they wanted to be taken care of in their homes. And it’s something that we’ve been pitching and pushing for years through our advocacy groups and in our marketing and promotional efforts. So, from that perspective, I’ll say it was a good year, but it was an eye-opening year for many as far as the value of home healthcare.

Andrew Bartolini: With this greater awareness that people would like to receive care within their own homes for risk, comfort, and other reasons, how is your procurement team supporting this broader shift and growth in the market?

Tom Cassidy: Procurement has not been viewed as a competitive advantage for the organization. And typically, we’re kind of behind the scenes just making things go, letting the focus remain on our service office locations and their ability to deliver care to our patients in their homes. So, while we’ve always just been there behind the scenes, not too visible, the past year cast a lens on what we’re doing and moved procurement into the spotlight.

An area that we didn’t want to lose sight of through 2020 was the social unrest that we witnessed that had supply chain implications as well. The organization kicked up our efforts on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and has done a great job of really engaging people and addressing these things that are happening in the world and occurring within our workforce. And that has carried over into our supply chain world. Through our PPE efforts during COVID-19, we identified a population of folks that were in need, particularly our hearing-impaired clinicians and patients.

One of our efforts to secure PPE was called “safe and clear masks.” These are surgical-grade masks that have a clear panel so that you can read lips and be able to communicate more effectively with the hearing impaired. But then the obvious broader and universal impacts were around supplier diversity. I’m pleased that we were able to leverage the past year to truly promote our supplier diversity efforts around the environment, social governance, and corporate social responsibility.

Supplier diversity has really become a key focus for us. And we’re making great strides in those areas, working alongside everyone from legal to human resources to clinical to our finance team. There were a lot of really bright spots coming out of what many look at as a dark year.

MORE CPO TOPICS

Procurement Experts on CPO Rising – Driving Procurement with Four Elements

Procurement Experts on CPO Rising – Maximizing Patient Outcomes

Procurement Experts on CPO Rising – Hardwiring Sustainability into the Business

Procurement Experts on CPO Rising – Furthering the Mission in Higher Education

Tagged in: ! Procurement Experts on CPO Rising, Chief Procurement Officer, CPO, CPO Shop Talk, Strategy