Robin Lincoln is chief contracting officer at Capstone Health Alliance. With over 15 years of experience in healthcare contracting, Robin and the Capstone contracting team helped guide Capstone members through the pandemic and supply chain upheaval. She recently spoke with Caresfield about how the supplier/purchaser relationship evolved since the pandemic and how her team helps Capstone members balance cost and clinical outcomes.
Can you give us an overview of your career, and tell us how you ended up as the chief contracting officer for Capstone Health Alliance?
I graduated with a degree in Computer Science. Although I have never pursued a career in programming, the education I received in logic has applied to almost every job I’ve held. I’ve been in various industries, including telecom, market research and pharmacy.
I have about 15 years’ experience working in healthcare contracting and support. I quickly realized customer service, account management and operations have been common denominators in all my positions, and they all apply to healthcare. Those core strengths are what have allowed me to stay in healthcare and feel like I’m making a difference.
I started with Capstone in 2009 after serving as director of a smaller regional purchasing alliance based in East Tennessee, which is my home. Capstone was experiencing significant growth at the time, which made it very exciting and challenging.
We serve more as a trusted resource because we don’t sell to members; rather, we work to support their day-to-day operations and allow them to make the best decisions through data, clinical resources or collaboration with other members.
Through the early years, the more I worked with members and suppliers I found that we were truly making a difference in this challenging world of healthcare contracting. Customer service – to both members and suppliers – is the name of the game. I have progressed through the company, first as a director and ultimately to my current position.
Our team members sometimes ask me if I am familiar with a process or policy, and I am often able to answer by saying, “Yes, I used to do that,” or “I wrote that!”
What is one success from your time at Capstone that you are particularly proud of?
On a regular basis we get amazing feedback from members telling us that they appreciate Capstone. We serve more as a trusted resource because we don’t sell to members; rather, we work to support their day-to-day operations and allow them to make the best decisions through data, clinical resources or collaboration with other members.
There is one example of an initiative we did that was more of a utilization instead of a contract initiative. It involved helping members establish a formulary for a category of products where there were thousands of products. By creating formularies, they were able to save a significant amount of money without really involving clinicians or patient care having to make very tough decisions.
How has contracting changed since the onset of COVID-19? How have you and Capstone responded?
To say a lot has changed is an understatement. The basic elements of contracting have changed due to the additional emphasis on supply stability, relationships and transparency. Cost remains a factor, but we continue to hear from our members that a great cost doesn’t help them unless there is reliability for the product in hand.
It has been a monumental change for all parties involved – manufacturers, GPOs, providers and distributors. The winners throughout the past two years have been those who are willing to step up to the plate, take risks and sometimes even accept short term losses in order to support their customers and help hospitals take care of their patients.
How have supplier/purchaser relationships evolved since the pandemic?
Purchasers are feeling more guarded based of the number of times they have had to go to extreme measures to source products for patient care and just to keep their doors open. In a lot of cases, they were disappointed in the lack of transparency and the lack of prior notice. That may have been a minority of suppliers, but I feel everyone in the industry is bearing the burden of that.
Providers are now looking for detailed documentation of supply stability. Failure to Supply Guarantees are one thing no one really likes to talk about because neither party truly wins, but providers want to see that suppliers have skin in the game and are truly committed to providing supply as expected. When supply isn’t available, is that supplier going to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them to find that best next option?
What kind of value has your team brought to Capstone members in the last year?
It’s no surprise, we’re seeing a lot of price increases across categories. Traditionally, Capstone has been able to offer our members cost savings based on the aggregate spend of our membership and the way we partner with suppliers and help to promote them out to the market. We have continued to mitigate the majority of cost increases and continue to show savings to our members across our broad contract portfolio.
During the pandemic, our team continued to renew or initiate contracts. Many of our processes can be considered “labor augmentation,” where our processes manage tasks that would normally be handled by a member’s supply chain staff, thus freeing them to handle other priorities.
Healthcare, like every other industry, has been hit hard by labor challenges. For Capstone, it’s not just the contracts we make available, it’s the level of support we provide that has really made a difference for our members. We stayed in close touch with our members through the pandemic, working to help source alternative products in case of product shortages and serve as a venue for our members to share successes and challenges.
We were especially cognizant of the fact that our members all had limited bandwidth as they were working through supply shortage issues. Our goal was to provide timely and accurate communication while remaining available to readily respond to their needs. Capstone’s field team members, who were working from home when hospitals were closed to visitors, responded to calls days, nights and weekends and worked tirelessly beside the contracting team to assist our members in any way possible.
What opportunities do you see for contracting and implementations for Capstone members in the coming year?
Great question! The 2022 Capstone forum is our first face-to-face meeting since our Forum in 2019. We intend to use every opportunity to ask questions of our members and listen to their thoughts, ideas and concerns to help us develop our most impactful initiatives for 2023.
What can members expect at the 2022 Capstone Forum Oct. 18-20 in Myrtle Beach?
The majority of our Annual Forum participants have been in healthcare for years, and I think it is safe to say that the last two years have been a far deviation from normal for everyone, even our seasoned supply chain leaders and supplier partners.
We would be remiss if we didn’t take time to acknowledge the extreme efforts everyone has been through to provide patient care during a pandemic, so we will be taking some time to recognize all that providers and suppliers have done during the past two years. We also want to emphasize and demonstrate the power of collaboration and how that can help us all move forward.
In tough times, members can share solutions and creative means of providing patient care. In good times, we can use success stories to exponentially expand the impact. That’s one of the strengths of Capstone.
Our design for the forum is to allow our members to share stories and hopefully become re-energized to continue the hard job of providing quality products and services for patient care.
