ACE Advisory Board Bio Hold: 2024 ACE Summit

John Sdanowich is a veteran of 27+ years in in health care finance, operations and supply chain strategic sourcing and vendor relationship building. He has a successful record in the development of corporate supply chain strategies, negotiations, and alternative financing solutions. John’s experience includes team building, mentoring and coaching of staff/team integration. He is an expert in capital sourcing with a strong background in cash flow improvements. During his time with the Johns Hopkins Health System he was the Director of Capital Sourcing for Nobilant and The Johns Hopkins Health System in Baltimore, Maryland. John created an integrated capital department, with three units, creating policies, procedures and workflows to enhance the capital strategic sourcing process. He was with Johns Hopkins for more than 27years, 17 of those years as the Capital Administrator, responsible for the financing and negotiations of all health system medical equipment and service contracts. John had oversight for the capital sourcing for the 6-JHHS hospitals and the sourcing of the other 12-GPO hospitals, totaling over $900-million in capital spend. The sourcing included the total cost of ownership, all consumables and services, as well as capital acquisitions. His focus on equipment is the technology, life-cycle-management and the obsolescence risk of the medical equipment. John’s approach includes reviewing the changes in vendor’s medical equipment, evaluating products at the factory and with senior management in research and development, to access the most economically feasible acquisition methodology. He was also responsible for making financial acquisition decisions for JHHS that included lease-buy analysis and related finance polices. John co-chaired the RFID Committee, tasked with finding a real-time location solution for tracking equipment, patients, and employees, which was installed in the two new clinical towers. John also worked in the Department of Emergency Medicine as the Assistant Administrator and as a Management Engineer, working on the re-engineering of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. The main focus of the restructuring was in the departments of Surgery and Medicine. John has published: A White Paper, “Life-Cycle Financing for Capital Investments”, “Strategies to Maximize your Capital Dollars”, in Medical Imaging/MedAssets.Com Forum, and “How to Create a Capital Process to Maximize Investments”, in Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology. John is a regular speaker at the IDN Summit, and Chair of the Advisory Board of the ACE Summit. He is a board member of The John Carroll School and the Johns Hopkins Federal Credit Union.

As an Executive Director reporting to the Chief of Operations, Frank Aucremanne is responsible for all real estate, planning, design, construction, and facilities operations and maintenance across the Cleveland Clinic system. The system encompasses over 24 million square feet of facilities consisting of over 200 buildings located across three states and two countries. Frank joined the Cleveland Clinic in 2010 from Naples, Italy, after retiring as a Navy Captain with over 28 years of service. While in Naples, Italy he was responsible for all U.S. Navy facility operations and maintenance across Europe, Africa and Southwest Asia. He is a registered professional engineer with 33 years of experience in all facets of facility planning, design, construction, and operations and maintenance. Frank graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1981 with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering then later went on to receive his Master of Science in Civil Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1986. He also completed the Advanced Management Program at Duke University Fuqua School of Business.

Frank Cirillo is the President and CEO of Cirillo Consulting Group. He previously served as Vice President, Business Strategy, at Acurity, Inc. His main duties at Acurity are to bring value to health systems’ supply chain operations through group purchasing program participation and process improvement. Additionally, Frank provides consulting services to health systems with Acurity’s consulting arm, Nexera. For the previous 25 years, Mr. Cirillo held several senior management positions at HHC. During the latter two years of his tenure, Mr. Cirillo, HHC’s first chief restructuring officer, led HHC’s priority project—the restructuring of HHC’s clinical and operational programs—yielding HHC an implementation change roadmap resulting in savings and additional revenues of over $300 million annually. For the prior 13 years, Frank was HHC’s chief operating officer.

Rebecca Gayden is vice president of sourcing operations at Vizient, Inc. In this role, she has leadership responsibility for the capital, imaging, facilities, and construction portfolios. With a healthcare background spanning nearly 20 years, Gayden has served in numerous management positions since joining Novation (now Vizient) in 2005. Most recently Gayden served as senior director in sourcing operations, and has provided leadership across a broad range of areas including Provista’s diversification strategy. Gayden previously worked in healthcare consulting as an equipment planner for over 11 years, where she served as project manager on projects ranging in size from small ambulatory surgery centers to 1 million square foot replacement facilities. Gayden holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from California State University Sacramento.

Mike Gerhardt leads the Energy, Construction, and Facility Management team at Intalere. This team provides consulting support to Intalere members and other customers to reduce costs and improve quality related to capital equipment, construction, facility, and energy management technologies. Collectively the five individuals on his team have over 130 years of healthcare, supply chain, and construction experience. Individually, Mr. Gerhardt has more than 30 years of healthcare industry experience, ranging from Biomedical Engineering Leadership to Facility Management Consulting. He was recognized as the 2006 Outstanding Fee for Service Consultant at a large group purchasing organization. In his current role at Intalere, he was recognized as the 2014 Senior Director of the Year. Having spent half of his career working directly for healthcare providers, he has a connected and aligned perspective on helping healthcare organizations improve their quality and maintain a healthy bottom line so they can continue the critical mission of caring for patients. He has a passionate interest in sustainability, reducing energy costs, and the human impact on the environment. Mr. Gerhardt received a Bachelor’s of Science Degree from Xavier University in Cincinnati, OH and also holds an Associate Degree in Biomedical Engineering from Cincinnati State University.

Samantha Jacques, PhD, FACHE, is the Vice President of Clinical Engineering at McLaren. She manages Services throughout the McLaren system including 15 hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, imaging centers, and Michigan’s largest network of cancer centers. Prior to McLaren, she was Director of Clinical Engineering at Penn State Health and Texas Children’s Hospital. She is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives and the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, and is active in ACCE, CHIME, and HTCC. She also recently published a book titled “Introduction to Clinical Engineering”. She has a BS in Biomedical Engineering from Milwaukee School of Engineering and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Louisiana Tech University.

Dave Kistel is Vice President of Facilities & Support Services at Lee Health in Lee County, Florida. He is a graduate of Furman University. Dave is responsible for the integrated facilities and support service operations of a multi-hospital system including four acute care hospitals and two specialty hospitals with a total of 1,557 beds, 3 million square feet of physical plant, one nursing home, and over fifty (50) outpatient / physician office sites. His division includes 65 employees and five departments: Facilities Management Administration, Plant Operations, Facilities Planning & Design, Construction, and Environmental Safety.

Jeffrey Little is the Vice President of Strategic Supplier Engagment at Premier, Inc. He is the leading national expert in purchased services and healthcare performance improvement, specializing in all aspects of healthcare purchased services and operational consulting; general support services operations, materials management and supply chain operations. Jeff is a seasoned executive professional with proven success in service recovery operations as well as operational assessment and development of improvement plans for healthcare supply chain and support operations departments. He is a member of AHRMM, IAHCSMM and ACHE.

My hospital career began with Hospital Corporation of America in 1979. I had over 14 yrs in Material Management with HCA hospitals in New Mexico, Arkansas, and Texas. I also began specifying equipment and managing the annual capital equipment budgets for each of these hospitals. In 1992 I accepted the role of Project Manager at Northwest Texas Hospital in Amarillo, Texas. While there, several critical care additions including ED, NICU, ICU, Surgery, and PACU were completed. In 1997 I accepted a Corporate Material Management/Capital Equipment position with Community Health Systems. During 18+ years with CHS I had responsibility for both routine capital and for all corporately managed capital projects. Corporately managed projects included renovations, expansions, and full hospital replacements. I developed, and implemented CHS procedures and processes including the creation of a refurbished equipment acquisition program all of which are used by CHS today. My role was to insure that the needs of our facilities were appropriately addressed, provide coordination with the entire project team, and to insure that each project schedule was completed as planned. The expectations were to complete the project at the best cost, and to achieve the highest level of GPO contract compliance possible. This was accomplished by adhering to comprehensive equipment standards, and by taking advantage of the purchasing volume this creates. We tracked as many as 120 active projects of various sizes. In 2015 equipment plans for these projects totaled approximately $409 million. In August of 2015 Community Health Systems announced plans to spinoff 38 hospitals and Quorum Health Resources into a new company. Quorum Health Corporation was born on April 29, 2016 and I was selected to be the Senior Vice President of Material Management and Chief Purchasing Officer. My role encompassed responsibility for the full scope of supply chain activities, and all capital purchases.

Lance Mendiola, CHFM, CHSP, CBO, MS has served in many leadership roles in CHRISTUS Health since 2006 and recently as the System Vice President of Facilities Management and Construction since 2012. Throughout his healthcare, military and higher education career, he has held many leadership positions including Director of Facilities overseeing Clinical Engineering, Security, Safety, Housekeeping, Dietary, and Construction Inspector/Project Manager at Texas State University’s Planning Design and Construction department. Lance earned a bachelor’s degree Texas State University with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Technology with a concentration in construction management and a Master of Science in Public Safety with a concentration in Emergency Management from Capella University. Lance is active member of the American Society of Health Care Engineering (ASHE) and the Texas Association of Healthcare Facility Managers and is a veteran of the United States Army with a 26-year career.

Jill Pearsall is the Senior Vice President at Texas Children’s Hospital. She has leadership responsibility for real estate strategy, transaction and acquisition, facilities planning, project management and on-going support programs of artwork/signage, interiors/logistics, space management, and facilities information. Jill is a licensed architect in Texas and California and holds a certificate from the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB). Jill joined Texas Children’s Hospital in 2002 and has remained intimately involved in planning, developing, and executing over 5 million square feet of new construction and managing over $2.4B of work. She serves on several organizational committees, including Environmental Safety, Emergency Management, Facilities Executive, Executive Space Management and Capital Management. Jill is a graduate of the University of Southern California with a bachelor’s degree in Architecture. Prior to switching to facilities management and joining the healthcare industry, she practiced commercial and institutional architecture in both California and Texas.

ACE Advisory Board

Frank Aucremanne

Frank Cirillo

Rebecca Gayden

Michael Gerhardt

Samantha Jacques, PhD, FACHE

Dave Kistel

Jeffrey Little

Jerry A. McKinney

Lance Mendiola, CHSP, CHFM, CBO, MS

Jill S.M. Pearsall