From Continuity to Capability: Supply Chain Leadership as a System Enabler at UHN

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From Continuity to Capability: Supply Chain Leadership as a System Enabler at UHN

Winner, NISCL Public Sector Supply Chain Team of the Year Award

At this year’s NISCL Awards, the Public Sector Supply Chain Team of the Year distinction recognized more than operational excellence—it acknowledged leadership that transforms complexity into continuity, and systems into strategic assets. The University Health Network (UHN) supply chain team exemplifies a modern public-sector leadership model: one that anticipates disruption, enables enterprise priorities, and anchors every decision to patient outcomes.
In this feature, the UHN team shares how supply chain leadership has evolved from execution to enterprise influence—and what it takes to lead in environments where resilience, credibility, and care delivery are inseparable.

Defining Leadership Excellence in Today’s Supply Chain

At UHN, leadership excellence in supply chain is defined by the ability to turn volatility into continuity of care.
Strong operators execute reliably. Exceptional leaders go further: they anticipate constraints, influence decisions upstream, and elevate organizational capability. This leadership shows up in how external signals—tariffs, supply risk, inflationary pressure—are translated into proactive sourcing strategies, diversified supplier portfolios, and financial levers that stabilize cash flow while reducing exposure to disruption.

But anticipation alone is not enough. True leadership is tested in high-stakes operational moments.
A defining example was the rapid launch of the Reactivation Care Centre (RCC). Under tight timelines, the Materials Management team aligned supply readiness with construction milestones, secured critical items, and built workflows that ensured uninterrupted patient care. This was not simply strong execution—it was leadership in action, safeguarding organizational credibility while enabling system-level outcomes.

At UHN, influence is earned by speaking the language of the C-suite—cash flow, continuity, risk, and outcomes—and by using performance visibility and benchmarks to demonstrate impact. Leadership is elevated further by building capability in data, AI, supplier collaboration, and change leadership, ensuring the system is ready not just for today, but for what comes next.

The Strategic Imperative: From Support Function to System Cornerstone

Supply chain leadership at UHN is no longer a support function. It is a cornerstone of capacity, patient flow, and system transformation.

Digital modernization has been foundational. By digitizing end-to-end supplier transactions through SAP Business Network (Ariba) and strengthening data accuracy and price alignment via GHX, UHN reduced friction, shortened cycle times, and established the data foundations required to scale automation responsibly.
Equally important has been the evolution of partnerships. Through HealthPRO Canada and Mohawk Medbuy, UHN leverages national scale, market intelligence, and programs such as MitigAID to manage disruptions and protect continuity of care.

The RCC project again illustrates this strategic shift. Enabling 96 new beds on schedule directly supported Ontario’s efforts to relieve acute-care pressures. This is what strategic supply chain leadership looks like in the public sector: moving beyond operations to shape enterprise-wide priorities through proactive planning, technology enablement, and deep clinical partnership.

Moving Beyond the Function: An Enterprise-Value Mindset

Moving beyond functional excellence requires a deliberate shift toward enterprise value, system readiness, and long-term impact. At UHN, three principles guide this mindset:

1. Build integrated, scalable systems
Intake-to-pay processes are unified and data standardized, ensuring vendor masters, item catalogs, and contracts become trusted enterprise assets—not isolated supply chain tools.

2. Design resilience into sourcing strategies
Supplier diversification, including regional and near-shore options, is intentional—strengthening continuity of care while reducing fragility and exposure to disruption.

3. Anchor supply chain to patient pathways
Supply milestones are aligned with patient readiness and activation timelines. Item conversions, scanning accuracy, and cart readiness are used as visible indicators of system preparedness, with clinical partners engaged early through transparent planning and phased rollouts.

This approach positions supply chain not as a transactional function, but as a strategic enabler of care delivery, where operational decisions translate directly into measurable improvements for patients and providers.

Guidance for the Next Generation of Leaders

For the next generation of supply chain leaders, the message from UHN is clear: connect your work directly to patient outcomes and organizational performance.

Aspiring leaders must learn to “speak CFO”—understanding cash flow, working capital, and risk implications. They must fix data foundations early, then scale AI with discipline, governance, and purpose. Simplifying intake, guided buying, and workflows is critical to adoption and speed. Supplier relationships should be treated as a core capability, not an afterthought.

Equally important is how impact is communicated. Exceptional leaders show, not tell—using benchmarks and real stories of avoided outages, safer transitions, and faster access to care to demonstrate value.

Finally, invest continuously in personal and collective growth: data analytics, technology literacy, certifications, and collaboration across the Canadian supply chain community. These habits reinforce supply chain’s role as a trusted, influential partner at the executive table.

Leadership in Action: The Reactivation Care Centre

A defining example of leadership in action was UHN’s transformation of West Park into the Reactivation Care Centre—standing up supply chain operations for 96 beds under urgent timelines.

The team converted 307 items to UHN standards, updated 638 cart profiles, built 24 carts, scanned 612 items, and deployed scanning and labeling technology to ensure accuracy and traceability. Through joint planning and phased activation, the RCC opened on schedule with a 98.71% fill rate, ensuring uninterrupted care for transitional patients who no longer required acute-care beds.

This work sat alongside broader digital modernization efforts—advancing procure-to-pay systems, tightening transaction accuracy, and leveraging national partnerships for disruption readiness. The result was higher supply assurance, faster and more accurate requisition-to-invoice cycles, stronger compliance, and a better experience for clinicians, requesters, and suppliers.

Conclusion

The UHN supply chain team exemplifies what public-sector leadership looks like when it matures from execution to enterprise enablement. Their work demonstrates that supply chain, when led with foresight, discipline, and purpose, becomes a cornerstone of system readiness, patient safety, and organizational performance.
This recognition by NISCL is not simply an award—it is a signal of where the profession is headed, and what leadership excellence truly demands.