5 Lessons on Automating Healthcare Vendor Compliance

Healthcare procurement teams face growing challenges maintaining supplier compliance as vendor networks expand, technology evolves and risks become more complex.

Manual onboarding and fragmented records can make it difficult to maintain an accurate picture of supplier risk.

During a webinar hosted by Healthcare Digital in association with Amazon Business, Kaitlyn Roche, Associate Partner of Supply Chain, Procurement and Manufacturing Transformation at IBM, and Samantha Demick, Director of Procurement and Contracts Management at MVP Health Care, explored how automation and AI can help organisations strengthen oversight and improve efficiency.

If you missed it, you can watch the webinar on demand here.

Five key takeaways from the webinar

1. Shift from credentials to capabilities

Traditionally, vendor compliance has focused on verifying credentials during onboarding, including licences, insurance and registration. However, these initial checks offer limited insight into how a supplier's risk profile might change over time.

Kaitlyn believes organisations must place greater emphasis on suppliers' ongoing capabilities, particularly in areas such as cybersecurity, data protection and supply chain traceability.

“Compliance really used to be about credentials. Are you licensed? Are you insured? Are you registered?” she explains.

Kaitlyn continues: “With the pace of change of technology, with all of the disruption that's been happening from a foreign policy perspective, COVID, everything that's created all this disruption, there's a huge shift from credentials to capabilities.”

For healthcare organisations, this means understanding how suppliers protect sensitive information, manage operational changes and maintain compliance throughout a contract.

Samantha highlighted cybersecurity as a particular concern, especially when vendors handle protected health information (PHI) or expand their offshore operations. Organisations must understand where data is stored, who can access it and whether appropriate safeguards and insurance provisions are in place.

2. Move from reactive to proactive compliance

Supplier acquisitions, geographical expansion and changes to operating models can introduce risks that procurement teams may not discover until a contract amendment is required.

Samantha explained that this can leave organisations with little time to assess the implications or explore alternatives, particularly when switching providers would be difficult.

“When we're brought in at the last minute, it's like, OK, how do we go back and monitor this risk?” she says.

When this happens, the whole process "becomes really reactive,” Samantha explains. "And so we really need to start focusing on a more proactive approach to getting this information as companies evolve so that we can continue to monitor in real time and not just respond to it."

A more proactive approach involves monitoring suppliers as their businesses evolve, rather than relying on formal notifications or contract renewals to flag changes.

Automation can help identify developments such as acquisitions, ownership changes and geographical expansion, giving teams an earlier opportunity to investigate potential risks.

Supplier segmentation is also important. By prioritising vendors according to their criticality, risk profile and the availability of alternatives, procurement teams can direct resources towards the relationships that warrant closer scrutiny.

3. Use automation and AI to strengthen compliance

Automation and AI can streamline routine compliance activities, from tracking expiring credentials to identifying missing information in supplier documentation. However, both speakers stressed that organisations should review their existing processes before introducing new technology.

“The role of automation and AI in compliance is not just to make the process faster,” Kaitlyn says. “It's to help design a system where compliance can become the default across the organisation."

For example, procurement, legal and finance teams may request overlapping information through separate questionnaires. Consolidating these requirements could reduce administrative burdens for both suppliers and internal teams.

At MVP Health Care, Samantha described exploring AI agents to support contract reviews, internal guidance and compliance monitoring. These tools can flag potential contractual risks, such as liability limits requiring further scrutiny, while automated reminders can prompt suppliers to update insurance documentation.

Human oversight remains essential, with people reviewing flagged issues and making final decisions.

The objective is to reduce repetitive administrative work, allowing procurement professionals to focus on judgement, supplier relationships and strategic planning.

4. Monitor risks throughout the contract lifecycle

Compliance does not end when a contract is signed. Changes in supplier ownership, operations or technology can introduce risks that were not present during initial onboarding.

Kaitlyn highlighted the importance of monitoring indicators that reveal changes in a supplier's circumstances, rather than relying solely on certificates, licences and insurance records.

“The most valuable data today isn't really the data that tells you whether or not a vendor was compliant,” she says. “It tells you whether or not something has changed in the posture of the vendor that warrants an additional look.”

Automated monitoring can help identify relevant external developments, while supplier engagement provides further visibility into operational performance and changing requirements.

Organisations should also consider how dependent they are on individual vendors. Suppliers providing essential services, handling sensitive information or offering few viable alternatives may require more frequent reviews.

Combining supplier data, risk-based segmentation and ongoing engagement can give procurement teams a more complete picture of compliance across the contract lifecycle.

5. Embed collaboration and change management

Technology alone cannot resolve fragmented responsibilities. Vendor compliance often involves procurement, legal, finance and IT, with risks emerging when information is not shared effectively or accountability is unclear.

Kaitlyn believes procurement's role is evolving from acting as a gatekeeper during onboarding to overseeing supplier compliance throughout the relationship.

“Automation doesn't remove the need to coordinate. It actually increases the need to coordinate,” she says.

Clear responsibilities and collaboration between departments are therefore essential to ensuring that automated processes support effective risk management.

Organisations should assess technology providers' long-term viability, including their financial stability and product development plans, to ensure solutions can continue meeting their needs.

Rethinking healthcare procurement

The speakers' central message was that organisations should rethink compliance workflows before automating them. Simplifying processes, clarifying responsibilities and combining technology with human oversight can help healthcare procurement teams manage risk more effectively.

For Samantha, the opportunity is to free professionals from repetitive tasks and create more time for collaboration and strategic thinking.

“Get the automation working so we can get back to white boarding,” she says.

As AI adoption accelerates, continuous monitoring and closer integration between contract and risk management systems could become increasingly important. For healthcare organisations, the goal is not simply faster compliance, but stronger supplier oversight and more resilient procurement operations.

If you missed it, you can watch the webinar on demand here.

What is Amazon Business?

Amazon Business is a global platform that helps organisations simplify purchasing, control spending and improve supply chain efficiency.

The platform helps make complex buying processes more straightforward, offering tools that support purchasing visibility, standardised workflows and stronger procurement governance.

With Guided Buying, administrators can set central purchasing rules, highlight preferred products and guide employees towards approved purchasing options. This can help organisations maintain greater control over spending while making everyday procurement more efficient.

For healthcare organisations, these capabilities can support more consistent purchasing processes, improve visibility across supplier networks and help procurement teams manage operational risk.