Implantable Medical Devices and Healthcare Affordability: Exposing the Spiderweb

The United States spends more than 17% of its GDP on healthcare, while other developed countries average 8.7% of GDP on healthcare expenditures. All this spending doesn’t equate to value, quality, or performance, however. Among 11 high-income countries, the United States healthcare industry ranked last during the past seven years in four key performance categories: administrative efficiency, access to care, equity, and healthcare outcomes.

This book presents the implantable medical device (IMD) supply chain ecosystem as a microcosm of how these challenges of affordability and healthcare outcomes are created and are allowed to fester. The IMD Spiderweb, as the authors call it, is exposed as an example of how a wide range of participants--including physicians, health system CEOs, group purchasing organizations, health insurance companies, and supply chain executives--become ensnared in a web designed to benefit only one player.

Health systems in the United States pay as much as six times more for some IMDs than their counterparts do in Europe, and prices for the same IMD model vary even among different U.S. hospitals. While there is a fascination with the latest and greatest device, there is also a shroud around visibility into how these products have performed and are likely to perform in patients. The costs continue to rise not only in healthcare expenditures, but also in death and disability.

The IMD Spiderweb is presented as a prime lesson in the challenges in healthcare affordability and outcomes that occur throughout the entire healthcare industry. It is also put forward as an opportunity. The story behind how these challenges arose and continue to be deepened by the current healthcare ecosystem also provides a foundation for solutions.

Mark C. West:
Mark C. West is an executive with more than 30 years of experience in developing and implementing high-performing supply chain organizations and companies. His proven leadership capabilities came through experience in key roles with multi-billion-dollar companies, specializing in the re-engineering and commercialization of supply chains due to mergers, acquisitions, or historical underperformance.

Mark was the President of SharedClarity LLC from 2011-2020 after serving as vice president of supply chain management for UnitedHealthcare since late 2009. He is responsible for the launch of SharedClarity, focused on improving the quality and cost of medical supplies industrywide. SharedClarity became operational in early 2013.

From 2005 to 2009, Mark was executive director of supply chain management for the Cleveland Clinic Healthcare System. His re-engineering efforts challenged industrywide healthcare purchasing practices, yielding bottom-line cost savings that were nine times that of historical levels. Mark also implemented state-of-the-art technologies to improve materials management processes, highlighted by the deployment of a new 230,000-square-foot service center.
Mark was also the founder and president of Purchasing Partners Incorporated, a purchasing services company, helping clients reduce their cost of acquiring goods and services. His experience also includes serving as the vice president of corporate purchasing for America West Airlines and corporate director of operations support for Honeywell International.

Currently Mark devotes his time to entrepreneurial, consulting, and advisory activities through Tymax Holdings LLC, his private investment company. He currently serves as the lead investor for ＂The Hatch,＂ Bowling Green State University’s entrepreneurial program within the College of Business.

Mark received an MBA in Marketing from Cleveland State University, and a BS in Human Resource Management from Bowling Green State University. He is also Green Belt certified in Six-Sigma and sits on the boards of managers for three privately held companies.
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Michael Georgulis, Jr.
Michael Georgulis Jr. is a healthcare supply chain executive with more than 37 years of experience within the healthcare industry. Mr. Georgulis currently serves as board member and industry adviser to Southwest Healthcare Holdings. He has a strong background in negotiating supply, service, and capital agreements for healthcare institutions, budget management, team leadership, and establishing healthcare partnerships. He has also been cited in the Wall Street Journal.

Michael has held supply chain executive, and leadership positions in multiple health systems, Premier Health Alliance and Health Trust Purchasing Group (two group purchasing organizations), and United Healthcare Global, owned by the commercial payer organization. In addition, he spent 12 years as a Medical Service Corps officer in the United States Air Force attaining the rank of Captain. His experience includes both national, and international accomplishments working within privately owned, publicly held, government-owned, and faith-based health systems outside of his military experience.

Michael has managed category contract portfolios as large as ＄20 billion, with most category contracts ranging from ＄100 million to ＄500 million. His accomplishments include multiple implementations of enterprise systems, specifically the Materials Management Information System modules to include item masters and charge masters. Experience includes leading aggregated strategic sourcing processes, developing negotiation strategies, and writing agreements for health systems and GPO use for as many as 2,800 hospitals in many categories over multi-year periods, creating aggregated savings in the categories in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Additionally, Michael has successfully managed, engineered, and designed a strategic sourcing function, staffed the team, and created processes and tools for a for-profit start-up healthcare company (SharedClarity) that functioned extremely well for seven years before it was acquired. At UnitedHealthcare, Michael built the strategic sourcing process, designed the tools, and staffed a team for United Healthcare Global which owned more than 50 hospitals in Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Portugal, and Peru.

Michael is a graduate of Indiana University, from where he holds a BS in Public and Environmental Affairs with a concentration in hospital administration. He also holds an MPA from the University of Kentucky with a major in hospitals. Additionally, he is an honorably discharged U.S. Air Force Viet Nam era veteran having served one