What Happens Outside the Meeting Room: Lessons from the 2025 IDN Summit

The 2025 IDN Summit in Orlando drew over 1,700 attendees, one of the largest turnouts the event has seen. The panels covered AI in healthcare, tariff strategy, supply chain resilience, and value analysis. GPO leaders from every major organization were on stage. The content was relevant and timely.

But that's not why Dan Toomey says you should go.

In this episode, Dan shares the four conversations he had most often with other suppliers navigating GPO and IDN contracting, not from the breakout sessions, but from the hallways, the coffee lines, and the after-hours events. If you're deciding whether to attend the 2026 IDN Summit, these are the kinds of conversations waiting for you.

The Real Value: Hallway Conversations

The sessions are valuable. Hearing directly from IDN executives and GPO leaders broadens your understanding of what's happening across the industry. But Dan's takeaway was that the unstructured time, peer-to-peer, no agenda, no slides, is where the real learning happens.

"You can learn from a completely different industry partner that's not even in your space that can give you ideas and strategies of how you can improve something internally."

Some of those conversations validated strategies Dan has been teaching on Tuesday Talks. Others surfaced struggles he hadn't heard articulated quite the same way. Four themes came up over and over again.

1. "How Do I Align My GPO and IDN Teams?"

This was the number one conversation Dan had at the summit. Companies of all sizes are struggling with the same structural question: who engages the GPOs, who calls on the IDNs, how often do those teams talk to each other, and how does the field sales team fit into the picture?

Dan's answer hasn't changed: "You have to be parallel. You have to find a way to draw that line between your GPO, IDN, and sales team, and they have to be aligned in the strategy, the conversation, and the call points."

The most common breakdown he sees? Regional directors and IDN directors don't talk regularly. That disconnect cascades. When they're not aligned on strategy, the sales team gets mixed signals. Engagement at the hospital level stalls. Value analysis conversations never get traction. Supply chain relationships never develop. And when the time comes to present to the contracting team, the story doesn't hold together.

Alignment isn't optional. It's the foundation everything else is built on.

2. "We Have a Contract, But We're Not Getting Penetration"

This came up repeatedly. A company wins the contract, expects to see a spike in sales, and six months later is wondering what went wrong.

The contract is a door opener, not a revenue guarantee. Dan's advice to the suppliers he spoke with: get more engaged with your GPO, and explore the layers of support most companies never discover.

"How engaged are you with your GPO manager outside of the standard conversations? Are you bringing back positive stories, 'Hey, we won this account, here's why'? Are you sharing where you're stuck, 'We've tried multiple communication approaches with this facility, we can't break through, can you help us navigate?'"

The GPO wants to help you succeed on contract. But they can't help if they don't know where you're struggling. And beyond the contract manager, there are programs most suppliers never tap: marketing support, clinical resource teams, special buy programs, field service coordination, data analysis. Every time you engage with another layer of the GPO, you learn something new about how to drive your contract forward.

3. "How Do I Position for Committed Programs?"

Several suppliers Dan spoke with were looking beyond standard contract awards toward committed programs and sole-source positions, the bigger, more exclusive opportunities that GPOs offer their most strategic partners.

The challenge is that you can't skip steps. Committed programs require proof: market awareness, demonstrated market share, a track record of successful contract execution. If you don't have those building blocks in place, the conversation about a bigger award isn't going to land.

"How do I get that contract awareness, that marketing awareness, to get the market share, to be more engaged with those committed programs?" That's the question Dan heard, and the answer is a progression, not a shortcut. Build proof points with your current contracts first. Drive conversions. Document successes. Then use that track record to make your case in the next bid cycle.

4. "How Do I Handle Price Increases Without Destroying Relationships?"

With tariffs, rising container costs, and labor increases creating margin pressure, many of the suppliers Dan spoke with were facing the same dilemma: they need to raise prices, but they don't want to damage the relationships they've built.

The message from GPO leaders at the summit was clear: "Come talk to us. We'll work with you. Let's see what actually happens before you execute something. Maybe there's a way we can work through it."

What doesn't work is walking in cold with a number. "Don't just walk in the door and say, 'Hey, you heard about tariffs. We're raising price 30%.' That's the last thing anyone wants to hear."

What does work is transparency. Dan shared a story from a previous experience where he sat down with a frustrated physician and walked through the actual cost breakdown: container costs that had tripled, labor rate increases in manufacturing countries, regulatory compliance costs. The physician's response: "I had no idea. No one has ever explained it like this."

"There's never going to be a right answer, but you have to have the conversation. You have to sit down and say, realistically, here's what I'm facing, here's what I'm absorbing, and here's what I need from you to stay in a position to serve you well."

Open the books. Show the math. The relationship survives honesty far better than it survives surprises.

Looking Ahead: The 2026 IDN Summit and Other Opportunities

If you missed the 2025 summit, the 2026 event is coming up. If 2025 is any indication, it's worth being in the room, not just for the sessions, but for the conversations that happen around them.

Dan also recommends these events for networking and industry engagement:

• Health Connect Partners: Supply chain and OR strategy conferences with structured networking formats.
• IDN Summit Fall: A second annual event, typically held in Arizona, covering the same caliber of content and attendees.
• Association of National Account Executives (ANAE): Regional events designed specifically for national account executives to collaborate and learn from each other.
• AHVAP: The annual conference for value analysis professionals, a critical audience for anyone selling into health systems.

"If you can't always get them on the phone or can't always get them at the hospital, look for some of these meetings to attend. You're not going to get the PO at the conference, but you're going to get the lead. You're going to get the pathway."

And one more reminder from Dan: follow up. Be persistent. Be different. And remember your value proposition.

"You don't have to be quirky. You don't have to be funny. You don't have to be overly unique and cutesy. You have to get right to the point with what your value prop is, what you're providing to the patient, to the facility, to the savings, and how it all ties together."