Read more for details on our 2024 endeavors.
UISS Educational Scholarship Program 2024
The UISS Supply Chain scholarship program was introduced in January 2024. The Scholarship program offers funds to IHA and UISS Supply Chain staff for education and development within the field of Supply Chain Management. We are happy to report that awards have been made to 17 UISS and IHA applicants to help the supply chain community with career and staff development through participation in AHRMM membership, educational programs and CMRP certification. Congratulations to the awardees!
Supply Chain Forum
UISS held its third Supply Chain Forum on Wednesday, March 13, 2024. The Supply Chain Forum was designed to bring like-minded supply chain executives across our membership together to share challenges, exchange ideas, discuss best practices, and provide insights on the supply chain environment on micro and macro level. It is a 60-minute program that includes trending topics, networking and best practice sharing as we cultivate this community for our members. To view the presentation, click here.
UISS Board Adds New Members
UISS is pleased to announce our newest board members:
Kevin Randall, Chief Financial Officer for Crouse Health
Kevin began his career at Crouse in 2013 as a Senior Accountant. After a brief time in Buffalo as Chief Financial Officer for Oishei Children’s Hospital, he returned to Crouse in 2018 as the Director of Finance. In his role as CFO, Kevin oversees and provides strategic direction and leadership for all financial aspects of the Crouse Health system, including the areas of accounting, cash management, payroll, purchasing and materials management. A graduate of SUNY Oswego, he holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting.
Lou Aiello, Senior Vice President and CFO for Mohawk Valley Health System
Louis Aiello is senior vice president and chief financial officer for the Mohawk Valley Health System (MVHS). He has served as senior vice president and chief financial officer for MVHS since March 2014.
In this position, Aiello is responsible for the finance and operations of the company while integrating accounting, budgeting, investing and financial reporting as well as providing the health system with the managerial support necessary to administer the highest quality of care to all patients.
Aiello is responsible for overseeing Patient Access Services, Patient Accounting, Financial Services, Cash Management, Health Information Management, Telecommunications, Purchasing, Mail Room/Print Shops, Nutrition Services, Environmental Services (FSLH), Patient Transport System (FSLH), Call Center, Laundry and Home Care Services. Prior to the MVHS affiliation, Aiello served as the chief financial officer and vice president of finance at St. Elizabeth Medical Center. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Accounting from Utica College of Syracuse University and passed his Uniform CPA Examination in 1996.
Kevin Kerwin, Esq., Acting President & CEO for Iroquois Healthcare Association
Kevin Kerwin, began his career in law and advocacy as the Legislative Counsel to the NYS Department of Labor. He currently serves as Acting CEO of the Iroquois Healthcare Association after serving Iroquois in various capacities since 2021, most recently as Executive Vice President and Legislative Counsel.
Kevin has a rich background in the health care space, working in policy in multiple stages of the continuum of care. Prior to Iroquois he served as the Vice President of Public Policy at the NYS Association of Healthcare Providers, which represents licensed home care providers.
Prior to that he worked at the New York State Bar Association as the Associate Director of Governmental Relations and Deputy General Counsel.
Kevin has deep experience in policy, government and legislative process. In addition to workforce issues, in the healthcare space he has gained expertise along the health care policy spectrum in long term care and acute care.
As a volunteer, he is also a member of the New York State Bar Association as a leader on its Elder Law and Special Needs Section –Legislative Committee; Health Law Section; Committee on Leadership Development; and Committee on Legislative Policy as its chairperson. Mr. Kerwin graduated from State University of New York at Albany and then went onto Western New England College, School of Law where he earned his J.D.
NYSID Janitorial Services
We are proud to be in partnership with NYSID as we prioritize our commitment to corporate and social responsibility and provides our members with diverse product and service offerings. Procuring services through NYSID allows individuals with disabilities and qualified veterans employment. These dedicated workers clean and maintain your healthcare facility and are detail-oriented, well trained and provide environmentally friendly cleaning practices.
If you are interested in working with NYSID to employ their janitorial services or to find out more about the IHA/UISS contract with NYSID, contact Mary Brisson.
UISS Renews Contract for Energy Procurement and Consultation with Zenith Energy and Sunser Energy Consulting
We are happy to announce that we have renewed our agreements for an additional three years. Over the years, UISS has worked with Sunser Energy Consulting and Zenith Energy to help our members reduce the cost of energy through market procurement, demand management, on-site energy assets and sustainability solutions programs.
The core services offered through UISS Energy Consultation and Procurement Contract are:
Energy Procurement: Drive savings in market electricity and natural gas using leading edge financial analytics and aggregated purchasing.
Sustainable Energy Procurement: Source lowest-cost renewable energy supply solutions, including solar, wind and biomass.
Energy Demand Reduction: Reduce utilization and increase efficiency using data analytics to identify operational improvements.
By offering these core services, members can lower their energy costs significantly. For additional information, please click here.
UISS Announces New Contract with Ntracts
After a lengthy evaluation process involving IHA member insight, UISS has partnered with Ntracts, a contract lifecycle management software-as-a-service application exclusively focused on healthcare that enables users to originate, search for and report on contracts.
This member-driven initiative helps support the organizational management of contracts and allows our members to:
Mitigate Risk of Non-Compliance – Ntracts’ CLM platform creates a single source of truth for all contracts and streamlines workflows. Healthcare organizations can easily monitor compliance with provider, vendor and payer contracts, reducing the risk of an inspection by the OIG, DNV, Joint Commission and other accreditation agencies.
Gain Efficiency – Ntracts users have measured an average of 25% improvements in efficiency when utilizing Ntracts’ CLM workflows to seamlessly handle their contracts’ lifecycle from initial request and document generation, to approval, signature, subsequent reviews, amendments, and termination.
Increase Visibility – Give financial teams immediate access to real-time information. Enabling data-driven, informed decisions.
Reduce Costs – According to experts, companies lose an average of 9% annual revenue due to contract mismanagement. Ntracts’ built-in notifications and advanced reporting add to your bottom line by avoiding unintended auto-renewals, avoiding or reducing contract overpayments, and eliminating payments on expired contracts.
100% Implementation Success – Efficient implementation process completed by healthcare experts with minimal client resources.
Partnership – Ntracts becomes a partner of the healthcare organization’s contract and compliance programs and part of their users’ day-to-day.
Powered by Hall Render, the nation’s largest healthcare law firm, Ntracts delivers a comprehensive contract management solution through a unique combination of healthcare, technical, and legal expertise matched with user-driven online contract management software that mitigates compliance risk, achieves cost savings, improves efficiency, and ensures our clients stay in front of changing regulations.
Click here to learn more about Ntracts.
Click here to review the ROI Whitepaper.
If you need more information or have questions, contact Mary Brisson, at [email protected] or 315-383-5513.
UISS Announces New Quarterly Service Line Portfolios
UISS is excited to announce the launch of our new quarterly service line portfolios, designed to enhance your procurement experience and maximize value across your operations. The portfolios we created are focused on the following:
- Imaging and Radiation Oncology
- IT Services
- Facilities, Construction and Environmental Services
- Clinical Laboratory
- Surgical Services
- Nursing Services
Highlights of the New Quarterly Service Line Portfolios include:
Supplier Promotions: We have included all exclusive promotions tailored to each service line category. Please click here to view our supplier promotions for Imaging and Radiation Oncology.
Premier Contract Portfolio & UISS/Acurity Contract Portfolio: Explore all contracts available for each service line category, ensuring you have access to a wide range of options that meet your specific needs.
We are committed to supporting you in achieving your goals and are confident that our new quarterly service line portfolios will help to provide significant value.
If you’d like to view any of our service line portfolios, please contact us.
2024 Supply Chain Symposium
On behalf of IHA & UISS, we’d like to extend a warm thank you to all who were able to attend and take part in our first ever Supply Chain Symposium this week at The Turning Stone Resort Casino. The Supply Chain Symposium was held on September 11, 2024 at the Turning Stone Resort Casino. It was a day full of valuable networking opportunities with fellow healthcare Supply Chain Professionals, and engaging sessions designed to enhance the participants industry knowledge.
A special thank you to our event sponsor, Nexera!
We’d also like to extend a special congratulations to all of our award winners this year!
We kicked off our Supply Chain Symposium with an award ceremony dedicated to supply chain and supplier recognition.
Our 2024 Supplier Recognition Awards went to:
- US Foods, Albany Division, Nicholas Palumbo: Nicholas Palumbo, Vice President, National Sales, received the award for demonstrating continuous improvement in delivering industry-leading value to UISS members while consistently seeking new and innovative ways to improve services, support and value.
- SpendMend: For providing innovative and valuable products and services that help to lower supply chain costs and improve operating efficiencies for UISS members.
Our 2024 Supply Chain, Critical Access Hospital Recognition Award went to:
- River Hospital, Robert LeBlanc: Robert LeBlanc, Director of Supply Chain, received the award in recognition of your outstanding performance in improving supply chain procurement & operations.
Our 2024 Supply Chain Recognition Awards went to:
- Samaritan Medical Center, Supply Chain Team, Laura Williams: Laura Williams, Director, Supply Chain, received the award in recognition of outstanding total cost management & supply chain transformation.
- Samaritan Medical Center, Supply Chain Team, Maxine Briggs: Maxine Briggs, Vice President of Finance and CFO, received the award in recognition of outstanding total cost management & supply chain transformation.
Our Keynote speaker, Dr. Jimmy Chung, MD, MBA, FAS FABQAURP, CPE, CMRP, Chief Medical Officer with Advantus Health Partners, delivered an impressive presentation, “Think Outside the Box; It’s Time for Supply Chain to Save the Day”, provided insights into the market conditions currently driving the need for a shift in sourcing. 
Dr. Chung explained that organizations pride themselves on providing excellent care, but there’s always room for improvement. Even before the provider and patient meet. In previous years, executives, clinicians and Supply Chain focused on “physician preferences”. Today, the path to achieving value is through a reduction in costs, while maintaining a high level of quality and the best possible patient outcomes. Dr. Chung stressed the importance of Health Equality to the healthcare system, explaining that social and economic factors represent over 50% of health drivers, while genes and biology make up only 5%. The path towards value-based health resource optimization means reducing unnecessary variations, which will in turn reduce waste and improve safety. Health systems should leverage analytics through AI-generative technologies to maximize the benefits of standardization, increasing physician engagement through meaningful data that will result in greater health equity and overall value.
Jacob Wheeler, Senior Solutions Architect with CloudWave delivered an impressive presentation on, “Cybersecurity Risk to Supp
ly Chain”. This session explored the challenges, considerations, and risks hospitals face as their supply chain footprint creates exponential cybersecurity risks to their organization. The main takeaways from the presentation were to learn actions that can be taken with your supply chain to reduce the risk of being impacted by an attack on your suppliers, and how to respond if one of your suppliers becomes the victim of an attack.
Premier’s 2024 Breakthroughs Conference
Premier’s Annual Breakthroughs Conference and Exhibition was held on July 23-25 at the Gaylord Resort in National Harbor, Maryland. This year’s theme was “UNITED” and all of the keynote sessions were centered around that concept
Premier’s President and CEO, Mike Alkire started things off with a keynote session titled, UNITED FRONT: Forging Partnerships for Breakthrough Performance where he spoke about having a united front to transform healthcare.
For the first time, UISS hosted a happy hour social on Tuesday evening, July 23. UISS members were invited to join the UISS/IHA staff and socialize with other UISS members attending the conference. While it was a small group, new friendships were made and networks formed.
UISS sponsored eleven (11) members from seven (7) different facilities to attend the national conference. These members were treated to three jam-packed days of exploring connections in the latest in technology, artificial intelligence, labor optimization, supplier innovation and more all offered throughout the conference in the general sessions or the many different CEU approved sessions available.
Attendees were captivated by the session, UNITED VIEWS: Bridging Science, Consumerism and Consciousness. Where three leading physicians, including Dr. Deepak Chopra, lead the talk about how to combine science, consumerism, and consciousness into a wholistic approach to healthcare. It was a packed house to hear award winning journalist, NY Times Best Selling Author, and Co-founder of “Stand Up to Cancer”, Katie Couric, discuss her journeys with cancer and her work to make others aware of this disease. Her foundation has raised over $750 million to support cutting edge science and cancer therapies.
Again, UISS was thrilled to have staff members from Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown, NY present at the conference.
- Jessica Goodrich
- Disaster Preparedness: The Role of the Infection Preventionist in Water Disruption
- Lance Bombard
- OperationsAdvisor® One Size Does Not Fit All: Using Operations Advisor Benchmarking for Laser Focus
Premier closed out the event with a concert/celebration by the Goo Goo Dolls! It was an outstanding three days filled with vendor exhibits, networking events, and educational sessions. We look forward to what Breakthroughs25 has in store. Mark your calendars; next year’s Breakthroughs Conference will be held July 15-17, 2025. Hope to see you there!
Employee Services Program (ESP) Update
UISS is pleased to welcome Bertrand Chaffee Hospital as the newest member of the Iroquois Employee Services Program (ESP). Bertrand Chaffee employees now have access to the hundreds of discounts and services that are specially packaged and offered to ESP members.
In these times of rapid employee turnover and healthcare worker shortages, there is a need to offer incentives to attract and retain good employees and the ESP is an extremely cost-effective solution to that issue without overwhelming your staff with added work.
To learn more about the Employee Services Program, contact Mary Brisson.
MWBE Vendor Sourcing Needs Survey
With the inflow of requests from our members regarding information on NYS and other WMBE vendors on contract, IHA/UISS is considering expanding its portfolio of contracted products and services that mirrors the demographics of the communities our members serve. We’ve been conducting a short survey to collect feedback from our members about their WMBE vendor sourcing needs, and there will be more to come on this in 2025.
If you have any questions, please reach out to Maddy Fitzgerald at [email protected].