2018 Advisory Board

As the Director of Supply Chain Commercialization, Richard works as a senior supply chain leader at Intermountain Healthcare to deliver the supply chain triple aim of ‘Becoming a Model’. This effort includes our strategy to share supply chain best practices and make available to other providers our supply chain products and services. He has a proven track record of leading complex and diverse teams to deliver exceptional customer value. He has lead major award winning supply chain initiatives like our procurement transformation and our product standardization.

Prior to his current role, he led the category management team at Intermountain. He has worked for 3M Health Information Systems in development of their electronic medical records. He has also worked for Siemens developing commercial IT products. He is a graduate from the University of Utah with a degree in computer science and also has a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Phoenix where he has taught 17 years.

Karen Conway has nearly 25 years experience in marketing and c ommunications, more than half of which have been spent working with healthcare organizations. Karen’s areas of focus and expertise include strategic planning, market research and analysis, media relations, government and regulatory affairs, crisis c ommunications, and conference and event planning.

Prior to joining GHX, Conway served as principal of Conway Associates, where she applied the principles of continual quality improvement to help organizations achieve their strategic objectives. Her sound, yet unique, approach to strategic communications was developed in collaboration with her business partner (and father), Earl Conway, who worked directly with Sam Walton to improve business relationships and supply chain processes between Walmart and Procter & Gamble.

Karen serves as the chair of the HIMSS Supply Chain Special Interest Group and as a board member of the Arizona State University Health Sector Supply Chain Research Consortium. She served on the leadership team of the Healthcare Supply Chain Standards Coalition and is actively involved with AHRMM, SMI, and the Medical Device Supply Chain Council.

In 2007, Karen was a contributing author for a book on eBusiness in Healthcare published by Springer as part of the Healthcare Informatics Series. She has also been published in numerous trade and general interest publications, including Redbook and Parents magazine. Karen also spent nine years as a journalist and eight as a lobbyist at the national and state levels.

Al McQueen has 30 plus years experience in supply chain and personnel management. Currently Al serves as Director, Supply Chain Logistics and Distribution for BJC Healthcare. Al has served in numerous leadership positions for the Department of Defense and the United States Air Force. His logistics career started in Air Force where he served as a Commissary Officer and Special Projects Officer in Europe and the Middle East. He retired from Air Force as Chief Enlisted Assignments at the Air Force Personnel Center where he managed personnel assignments and special duties for 4800 personnel. After retiring from the Air Force, Al worked for Cardinal Health as an Operational Excellence Manager and Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in both Business and Human Resource Management and a Masters in Business Administration. He is currently the AHRMM Chapter President for the St. Louis Chapter.

Dennis Orthman is Senior Director for SMI, responsible for the ongoing support and coordination of SMI member-led initiatives. His role includes research, analysis, and coordination of team activities. He has served as a consultant to the healthcare supply chain marketplace for over ten years, and brings us over 25 years of industry experience.

Prior to joining SMI, Orthman served as Principal Consultant with BD Healthcare Consulting and Services, where he worked with healthcare clients around the country to streamline their internal supply chain operations. In his career as a healthcare supply chain consultant, Orthman served in leadership roles as a Director for VHA Improvement Services and as a Senior Consultant for Concepts in Healthcare. At the provider level, Orthman began his supply chain career at Boston City Hospital and also served in operational leadership at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center and at the corporate level for Partners Healthcare System where he was responsible for system contracting and supply utilization. Throughout his career, he has contributed to industry publications, managed multifaceted million dollar projects, facilitated senior management initiatives, implemented new systems and processes, and successfully delivered positive results for his clients.

Orthman is a member of AHRMM, a past board member of HCMMS, and remains an active member in a variety of local community associations and charities. He was recently recognized by Healthcare Purchasing News as being among healthcare supply chain influencers to watch.

Brad has dedicated 21 years to the pharmaceutical and medical device industry. He studies federal regulations and the affected business processes and provides insight and education to achieve compliance and efficiencies. While working with Deloitte and the supply chain standards organization, GS1 US, he has been instrumental in establishing supply chain leading practices for health care, leveraging operational improvement, governance, and data standardization.

Mr. Pedrow holds an Electrical Engineering degree from Lehigh University and a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Drexel University.

Kristine Russell, President of KSR Publishing, Inc. and Publisher of Healthcare Purchasing News. In publishing for over 25 years, Ms. Russell was formerly VP of Operations and Executive Publisher of the healthcare division at Nelson Publishing, Inc., overseeing 12 publications in various business-to-business technologies including: healthcare informatics, clinical lab, corporate IT, product/equipment design, OEM electronic engineering, metalworking and fabrication as well as other manufacturing areas. She formed KSR Publishing, Inc. in January 2003 and purchased Healthcare Purchasing News from Nelson Publishing in February 2003.

Ms. Russell graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Merchandising and minors in Textiles, Business and Art from Northern Illinois University. She has completed a number of graduate courses at Loyola University of Chicago, Dale Carnegie and the Georgetown University Healthcare Leadership Institute.

Eugene S. Schneller earned his Ph.D. at New York University. He holds an honorary physician assistant (PA) degree from Duke University.

Schneller’s consulting efforts, at Health Care Sector Advances, bring the most recent strategic thinking into practice for hospitals, GPOs and other supply chain organizations. He is Professor and former Director, School of Health Administration and Policy, College of Business, Arizona State University and former Director of the Division of Health Administration and Policy in the Arizona College of Public Health. He is Dean’s Council of 100 Distinguished Scholar and directs the Health Sector Supply Chain Research Consortium. He was formerly Counselor to the President of Arizona State University for Health Professions Education, Associate Dean for Research and Administration at the College of Business and Director of the L. William Seidman Research Institute. Schneller has served as a fellow of the Accrediting Commission of Education for Health Services Administration and on the Strategic Planning Committee for the American College of Health Care Executives. He has been a trustee of the Barrow Neurological Foundation. He served two terms on the state Medicaid advisory committee (AHCCCS) and the Health Care Group. Professor Schneller was appointed Primary Care Fellow, U.S. Public Health Service for 1995 and was selected by the Association of University Programs in Health Administration to occupy their seat as a commissioner on the Accrediting Commission on Education For Health Services Administration. Schneller has provided speeches to key health leadership groups including Novation, the NCI's Health Executive Leadership Forum, Standard Register, VHA, Premier, Broadlane, and the Ontario Hospital Association. He is the chair of the World Congress on Health Care Supply Chain. Schneller’s recent research has focused on standardization for clinical preference items (Milbank 2007), policy pertaining to the proliferation of hip and knee implants (Health Affairs 2009) and on the emergent and changing role of hospitalists (Health Care Management Review 2006). His recent paper on “orchestration” in the hospitalist movement was chosen as “Best Paper” at the 2007 annual meeting of the British Academy of Management. Other projects have included scrutiny of the health care supply chain, group purchasing organizations, and models of change in the health professions, inquiry into factors affecting graduate medical education, investigation into the emergence. His book, “Strategic Management of the Health Care Supply Chain” (Jossey-Bass 2006) is the recognized standard for analysis of health care supply chain management in the US. His book, “Orchestrating Change in the Public Services,” (Blackwell 2007) provides a penetrating analysis of large scale innovation in both the health and educational sectors in the US, England and Canada. He was named, in 2007, one of the most influential individuals in the area of health sector supply chain management. Schneller’s work on professionalism considers the massive changes that have confronted the medicine over the last 20 years – and their resulting in the co-production of medical care in areas such as orthopaedic surgery.

Barbara Strain is a veteran healthcare professional with over 30 years of experience. She has held a wide range of leadership roles serving areas such as the clinical laboratory, supply chain management and hospital safety. Currently she is the Director of Value Management at the University of Virginia Health System where she coordinates 10 value analysis teams and oversees data analytics related to supply standardization and utilization. She is a founding member and past president of the Association of Healthcare Value Analysis Professionals (AHVAP). Barbara speaks nationally on a variety of topics including value analysis, supply chain management, process improvement, safety in healthcare and strategic planning.