Behind the Scenes: The Crucial Role of Supply Chain Managers in Healthcare (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Steam Series, championed by your Southern California Toyota dealers.

Speaker 2: It's time for this week's steam profile. Our focus today is math. CBS News

Speaker 1: Sandra Mitchell takes us behind the scenes and inside the stock room and introduces us to a supply chain manager.

Speaker 2: I am unseen. Her name is Tamra Murphy and every hospital has someone like her. They aren't the people you usually meet when you need care. The part at

Speaker 3: the front end is the nurse and the doctor, but in order for the nurse and doctor to be able to do what they need, they need a bunch of different people

Speaker 2: behind them. Behind the scenes in hospitals are storage rooms like this one, filled with critical medical supplies that make safe health care

Speaker 3: possible. All kinds of different supplies. Murphy is associate

Speaker 2: administrator of supply chain for Keck Medicine of USC. So supply chain is

Speaker 3: everything from getting the gauze pad up to the nurses all the way up to buying a CT scanner or helping with the construction of a new building. Since

Speaker 2: early March, Murphy has been most concerned with maintaining the supply of PPE personal protective equipment. We're using far more than we ever used before. During the pandemic, Murphy has had to grapple with mask and gown shortages unimaginable just three months ago. Back then, I could get supply

Speaker 3: every day. Now I get it every three weeks and I need to be able to have on hand far more days worth of stock than I ever needed to before. And prices have

Speaker 2: skyrocketed. For example, a mask that sold for 15 cents 12 weeks ago now can cost up to $2 each in order to get enough but not break the budget. Murphy needs to predict the potential need. How many different people are going to go

Speaker 3: into a room and see a patient? Are we going to change how we're going in to see a patient? What are they going to wear? Because every mask has a

Speaker 2: different need. Murphy started out wanting to be a doctor, but she struggled with the chemistry. So she got her degree in accounting and became a CPA of all the steam disciplines. Supply chain management relies most on math. I

Speaker 3: use math to do calculations for price of PPE. Is it appropriate or not? I use it to determine what's the overall cost impact to our organization. And

Speaker 2: although she doesn't wear a white coat, Murphy feels she's still living her dream of making a difference for patients. I most impact the patient

Speaker 3: because I make sure that our nurses and our clinicians are safe and can visit that patient every time they need to.