The Quest to Deliver Reliability

In a video interview with Pharma Commerce, Jody Hatcher, CEO of Morris & Dickson and chair of HDA’s board of directors, outlines his vision for the future of the organization and the key priorities he hopes to drive during his tenure. He expresses a strong sense of privilege and responsibility in succeeding Kirk Kaminsky and looks forward to collaborating closely with Debbie Weitzman of Cardinal Health to strengthen connections across the pharmaceutical supply chain.

Hatcher emphasizes the often-overlooked value that distributors bring to the healthcare ecosystem. Representing more than 1,200 manufacturers and serving around 330,000 pharmacies and care providers, he describes distributors as being part of an "irreplaceable network" that plays a vital, behind-the-scenes role in ensuring the availability of medications and healthcare products across the country.

He outlines three main priorities for his leadership. First, he aims to enhance engagement within the distribution community—bringing together pharmacies, manufacturers, and distributors around their shared mission. Second, he highlights the critical importance of implementing the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) across the supply chain. With an extension recently granted, Hatcher underscores the need to meet the updated deadlines to maintain the reliability and integrity of the distribution network.

Lastly, he stresses the importance of storytelling—articulating the value and sophistication of the distribution sector to external audiences. He notes that while distributors are often discussed in various contexts, it's essential to clearly communicate their indispensable role in maintaining a secure and efficient healthcare supply chain.

Overall, Hatcher's vision centers on strengthening collaboration, ensuring compliance, and raising awareness of the distribution sector’s critical contributions.

Hatcher also comments on his day-to-day workflow at Morris & Dickson, including how it supports the efficiency and reliability of the company’s operations; steps that should be taken to ensure DSCSA compliance; types of implications that the potential 25% tariffs on pharmaceuticals can cause; and much more.

A transcript of his conversation with PC can be found below.

PC: Could you describe your day-to-day workflow at Morris & Dickson, and how it supports the efficiency and reliability of your operations?

Hatcher: Our workflow and processes are built around complementing those of our customers and our trade partners. For Morrison & Dixon, day-to-day workflow is a balance of knowledge, automation, and ultimately, the personal service that we provide to our customers. The funny thing about what we do is that our day largely starts when others are likely asleep. I say that in earnest, but it does begin upstream with our trade partners, including our commercial team—led by Jason Hanks—really work with our trade partners.

We've got over 400 manufacturing partners that we work with, and we really work closely with them to monitor the drug pipelines, manage the market, monitor pricing—all of those things that are critical to making sure that we're paying attention to the upstream elements of the marketplace, and then that ultimately translates into the physical receipt of the product from our trade partners into our distribution center. We bring it into the facility. It's got to be received and scanned such that we're receiving EPCIS data all per the DSCSA requirements, and then ultimately, what we rely on is a dedicated and committed team of folks who are receiving and then packing and shipping, while maintaining the integrity of the product.

As you think about that too, one of the things that's oftentimes overlooked is when you talk about product integrity—we have to maintain some really complex storage and handling of products that have a lot of diverse requirements in terms of cold storage, etc., so when we talk about product integrity, it's much more complicated than a lot of people give it credit to.

Then, the orders come in from our customers, and those orders are a privilege to have. We scan more than two million items each day with about a 99.9% accuracy rate before that order flows out the door, all built upon an infrastructure of complete automation. Our production in our facility interestingly relies upon about 200 employees per night, which is fairly low when you begin to look at the amount of volume that flows out of the facility. Ultimately, we load a fleet of 35 18-wheelers and more than 100 vans that travel over 50,000 miles per day delivering products to our customers.