SC Short Story
In recognition of Healthcare Supply Chain Week, Inspirity Health Partners is highlighting the people whose expertise and collaboration help healthcare organizations strengthen their supply chains and support patient care.
Darci may be new to the Inspirity Health Partners team, but the perspective she brings has been shaped by years of experience spanning direct patient care, healthcare operations and supply chain.
Now a senior manager in Mayo Clinic Supply Chain Management and part of the Inspirity Indirects team, Darci began her career as a radiation therapist. Since then, her path has taken her through radiation oncology operations, contracting, risk, category management and broader supply chain leadership.
Through every role, one theme has remained consistent: understanding what is getting in the way, bringing the right people together and finding a better way to work.
“My role looks very different today, but the clinical part of me has never gone away,” Darci says. “It influences how I listen, how I lead, and how I think about the future.”
Connecting people, information and expertise
Darci supports indirect category management, an area that reaches across nearly every part of a health system — from services and technologies to suppliers, equipment and operational processes. Working with Mayo Clinic and Vizient colleagues, she helps Inspirity partners navigate contract questions, supplier issues, cost opportunities and other operational needs by connecting them with the right expertise and resources.
But Darci is also looking beyond individual requests. She sees an opportunity to better connect the information generated through contracts, projects and implementation work so that knowledge can be carried forward rather than recreated with every new initiative.
“What we learn about a customer today should make us smarter about how we support them tomorrow,” she says.
Building a more proactive model
For Darci, one of Inspirity’s greatest opportunities is moving from managing individual projects toward a more connected and proactive way of working. Health systems already have valuable information — from spend and supplier data to contracts, local expertise and previous project experience. Bringing those pieces together can provide greater visibility into what has already been accomplished, what is underway and where new opportunities may exist.
Over time, Darci sees that foundation helping teams identify and prioritize opportunities, connect the right expertise and follow initiatives through implementation and value realization. And while data, automation and technology can enable that work, she says the objective remains decidedly human.
“Value is still broader than cost savings,” Darci says. “It includes quality, efficiency, visibility, accountability, and making the work easier for the people doing it.”
Her clinical experience also keeps one question front and center: Will this actually work for the people who have to use it?
Solving today while building for tomorrow
That philosophy is already taking shape through Inspirity’s work with Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH).
As the partnership grew and more indirect requests and opportunities began moving forward simultaneously, the team needed a clearer way to see the work collectively and maintain momentum. Darci partnered closely with Vizient colleagues to develop a more coordinated intake and tracking process designed to provide visibility into what had been requested, who was involved, what decisions were needed and what should happen next.
The immediate goal is clearer ownership and a more consistent working rhythm with the customer. But Darci also sees the work as an opportunity to learn what information should be captured and how it can contribute to a broader, repeatable Inspirity model.
“We are solving a real customer need today, but we are also learning how to build something that can become more connected, repeatable, and scalable for other partners,” she says.
The goal is ultimately bigger than better tracking. It is about building institutional knowledge so that each project makes the next opportunity — and the next customer experience — better.
A radiation therapist at heart
Despite the evolution of her career, Darci still considers herself a radiation therapist at heart. Caring for patients and families during some of the most difficult moments of their lives taught her the importance of technical precision, teamwork, clinical judgment and empathy. Those lessons continue to shape her work today.
“Supply chain may seem far removed from the treatment room, but I do not see it that way,” Darci says.
The equipment clinicians rely on, the services supporting care and the processes operating behind the scenes all ultimately affect the patient experience. For Darci, her current role provides an opportunity to take lessons learned while caring for individual patients and apply them to building better systems that can support care on a much broader scale.
