By Scott Skrzypczak, AVP – Operations and Procure-to-Pay, Northwell Health
This spring, I had the opportunity to speak at the IDN Spring Conference in Orlando alongside Brandon Droz, Vice President of Supply Chain Services at SpendMend.
Our session focused on something many health systems are experiencing in real time: Procure-to-Pay transformation is rarely clean, linear, or fully planned. More often, it is messy, complex, and evolving while operations are still moving at full speed.
At Nuvance Health (prior to our merger with Northwell Health), my journey started with Accounts Payable challenges, but it quickly became clear the real issues were much larger than AP itself. The problems were upstream. Contracts were disconnected from invoices. Data was fragmented. Processes varied across facilities. Teams were operating in silos. Visibility was limited.
One of the points that I learned quickly, and I shared during the discussion, was this:
“The problems that are visible at the AP level are not really caused at the AP level.”
That hard-earned realization fundamentally changed the way I approached transformation.
Over time, Nuvance expanded our focus beyond AP and started aligning purchasing, informatics, contracting, vendor management, and operational workflows into a more connected Procure-to-Pay strategy. Along the way, we focused heavily on education, process standardization, vendor optimization, and creating better alignment across teams.
The results were meaningful:
- Reduced check volume by 65%
- Significant improvements in operational efficiency
- Expanded rebate optimization efforts
- Improved employee engagement and retention
- Recognition through Supply Chain Distinction honors
And even more importantly… we created a more collaborative and scalable environment that better supports our health system long-term.
One thing that made a difference throughout that journey was being willing to engage openly and collaboratively with service providers and outside partners. Having the right mindset around those relationships can be valuable because an outside perspective often helps validate that the operational challenges you are dealing with are not isolated issues, but part of broader systemic and process-related challenges across the organization.
Our interactions with SpendMend were helpful in that regard. Beyond bringing perspective from similar health systems, they also provided practical guidance, useful tools, and access to experienced professionals like Brandon who had personally worked through many of the same operational challenges. Those conversations helped reinforce many of the themes we were working through internally and provided additional validation for the direction we were taking.
One of the things I appreciated most about the presentation with Brandon was that it stayed grounded in operational reality. We were not discussing theory. We were discussing the practical challenges healthcare organizations face every day as they try to improve workflows, reduce friction, and create better alignment across Procure-to-Pay operations.
I had known Brandon professionally prior to his move to SpendMend, and because he had personally worked through many of these same challenges during his time leading Procure-to-Pay operations at MUSC, the conversation felt practical, candid, and very experience-driven.
I also found that the conversation led to a number of great discussions with others at the conference who found themselves in very similar situations. Often, we tend to view operational challenges through the lens of a specific department or function, but many of the underlying issues are actually tied to larger interconnected processes that span multiple systems, teams, and workflows across the organization.
I also appreciated hearing perspectives from other organizations at the conference. A lot of health systems are navigating similar challenges in different ways, and there is value in simply being able to exchange ideas, lessons learned, and practical approaches with peers across the industry.
Transformation inside healthcare rarely happens all at once. Most progress comes incrementally through better alignment, clearer ownership, improved workflows, and a willingness to keep refining processes over time.
I appreciated the opportunity to share part of our experience and hear how others are approaching similar work across their organizations.