Written by Neil Rivenburgh
The Healthcare Forum presented a polished presentation from Anjella Johnson-Hooker, MS., FAC P/PM III from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Anjella told the audience about leading a major project at the CDC and being the executive sponsor in modernizing the center’s three fragmented, antiquated systems in managing how vaccines are managed.
There had been 8 years of efforts and a lot of money was spent to update the systems, but there was a “0% ROI” to show for all the activity. Anjella took the lead role and said it would be done within the year. And after overcoming many obstacles, she did deliver the Vaccine Tracking System (known as VTrckS) within the timeline. There were many benefits that came from doing the project; from the original 64 distribution systems and more than 400 depots, the new process reduced this to 2 national distribution centers. This reduced the risks of storage and lowered distribution costs.
The crowd learned a lot about the process for ordering and distributing vaccines across the country. The ACIP committee approves which vaccines will be ordered for inventory. Funding was provided by the OMB and used a state match model and based decisions on demographics and area poverty levels. McKesson holds the national distribution contract. Before the upgrade, the end-to-end process too an average of 21 days. After the project was complete, that process was down to 3 days. The new system provides near real-time reporting on inventory and order status. The system manages the CDC’s purchase contracts, state budgets and spending plans.
Anjella stressed that the keys to success were getting buy-in from the right stakeholders, overcoming resistance to change, understanding that stakeholders would have a perceived loss of control, setting expectations, and “knowing what you don’t know.” She put a lot of effort into building and keeping trust with the stakeholders. She declared that an executive sponsor must be totally dedicated to the project. That meant delivering a clear message from the top that failure was not an option and the team must do what is required to succeed.
Please join us Wednesday, July 18th from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the joint Healthcare/Technology Forum for the: Career Month. We will have several leading recruiters and Staffing companies present to provide career and job hunting tips and advice.
Location: Philips Healthcare
PHA Academy
One Deerfield Centre
13560 Morris Road
Alpharetta, GA 30004