Smarter Sourcing

There are a handful of genuinely interesting observations - AI as the new ERP, cybersecurity as a supply chain responsibility, non-clinical spend opacity - but they're surrounded by large amounts of meandering anecdote, leadership platitudes, and vague commentary. The ideas are rarely developed to a depth that would give an operator something immediately actionable.

“I'm seeing it, it's the new erp. So we, we went from these transactional accounting systems, inputs, outputs...I think we're in that next phase where AI, it's a starting point.”

“it's not just a headcount mover, uh, if you will, it's not a headcount reducer necessarily. Uh, it could be because the waste process, it can help us take Muda out of the system”

The AI-as-ERP framing and the Venn diagram argument about non-healthcare procurement practices migrating into healthcare are mildly fresh, but the bulk of the content recycles conventional supply chain wisdom: relationships over transactions, don't burn bridges, embrace staff. Nothing is genuinely contrarian or first-principles.

“I'm seeing it, it's the new erp.”

“I got rid of the word vendor in probably 1988. And it was supplier.”

Charlie Miceli is a legitimate long-tenure practitioner - Chief Supply Chain Officer, interim CFO, interim CTO, interim CEO at the same health system, Bellwether League honoree, and Patient Safety Movement board member. He has clearly done the work at scale across multiple domains. However, he is now retired and speaking largely in retrospective/wisdom mode rather than as an active operator grappling with current problems.

“I've been fortunate enough to uh, over the last uh, 17 years to report into the CFO and uh, three different CFOs”

“in 20, I want to say 2016, I was fortunate enough to work with our president at the time, Dr. Dave Mayer, who ran the MedStar, uh, safety institute and started it. Dr. Mayer and I presented at Gartner and talked about cybersecurity.”

There are isolated concrete anchors - 250,000 annual patient deaths from medical error, the WannaCry/NHS example, the 2013 Patient Safety Summit, the 2016 Gartner presentation - but no metrics from Charlie's own organisation, no dollar figures from initiatives he ran, and no benchmarks for AI or supplier management outcomes. The anecdotes are illustrative rather than evidential.

“over 250,000 patients are mortally injured, uh, annually”

“right then, that's when the WannaCry virus had hit the NHS and it showed where, if you didn't have Everything ticked and tied with your suppliers. There was a risk that was there.”

The host's questions are broad and rarely probe beneath the surface; follow-ups tend to affirm rather than challenge ('Yeah, no, that's great'). There is no productive disagreement, no pushback on vague claims, and the host occasionally volunteers information himself rather than drawing it out of the guest. The AI-succession-planning follow-up is the strongest moment but it too is left undeveloped.

“Yeah, no, in the next three to five years, where do you see, you know, kind of this going uh, in, in AI and technology platforms and, and, and what problems do you anticipate being solved through that?”

“Yeah. Well, thank you for all your support of patient safety. Uh, that's been a really cool uh, chapter of your life”