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William J. McFaul, expense management and clinical value analysis iconic pioneer, remembered by Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Hall of Fame

SCHAUMBURG, IL (August 20, 2025) — Bill McFaul liked to make connections.

Not just personally. Not just professionally. But also, procedurally and even elementally.

McFaul connected decisions and actions to expenses as well as interactions to outcomes. During the first few decades of his illustrious career, he demonstrated mastery in identifying, tracking and reducing non-labor, non-salary expenses — first for his own employers and then for clients of his renowned consulting firm. He fused savvy expense management practices and principles with clinical value analysis tools in the mid-1970s. This intelligence became the bedrock of McFaul & Lyons Inc., the formidable and venerable consulting firm he launched and operated with professional partner Diana Lyons, R.N., in 1980.

Even though McFaul sold the firm to Johnson & Johnson in 1997 and officially retired from business and industry, however, deep down something continued to gnaw at him as he watched the increasing prevalence of chronic disease in the world around him — from societal to familial to individual and personal.

Motivated by another worthy cause, he devoted the next five years to researching chronic diseases and their probable causes with the ultimate aim of connecting the two and developing potential solutions acknowledged, tested and proven by the scientific community. Those efforts drew him out of retirement to launch a think tank — The Center for Modeling Optimal Outcomes — to create what he called an "interdisciplinary catalyst for innovation" that wielded science-based methodology for managing change. He and his diverse team of academic, clinical, executive and scientific advisers merely wanted to break through the clinical, financial and operational silos that artificially blocked interdisciplinary communication and collaboration so that everyone would be united toward a common goal — improving healthcare by exercising clinical, financial and operational efficiency in a meaningful and responsible way.

McFaul's efforts led to the creation, development and growth of an extensive portfolio of patents on DNA repair and epigenetic modeling designed for application to healthcare expense management and reduction, next-generation value analysis and effective use of population health platforms.

On Saturday morning, August 16, McFaul retired for the final time and passed away. He was 81.

Eighteen years ago, Bellwether League Foundation (BLF) inducted McFaul into the Healthcare Supply Chain Hall of Fame as part of the inaugural Bellwether Class of 2008.

Barbara Strain, CVAHP, Chairman, BLF's Board of Directors, Bellwether Class of 2021, hailed McFaul as a true industry icon and pioneer.

"I had the pleasure of working with Bill and the McFaul & Lyons team when they were consultants during my tenure as a laboratory manager," Strain said. "Bill and I often touched base as I began my passion journey for value analysis. He was indeed a pioneer in the early '80s as he continued to plant the seeds of an integrated supply chain. He made what at the time seemed a futuristic view of healthcare supply chain into a realistic, attainable reality.

"In true Bellwether fashion, Bill's memory will live on as a beacon of light, guiding the way toward a stronger, more resilient healthcare supply chain," she added.

"Bill was indeed a pioneer who truly elevated our profession and served as a role model and mentor to so many," said Gary Rakes, Bellwether Class of 2021, and Chairman, BLF's Advisory Council. For retired healthcare supply chain consultant Jamie Kowalski, McFaul was a respected collaborator as well as competitor and fellow Hall of Famer.

"Bill McFaul was a major player in the healthcare field of supply chain management," Kowalski said. "He developed and executed new methods that his clients and frequently other supply chain leaders began to use for their own teams and maybe their own clients. In fact, some may have become competitors and honored him and his work by copying his influential methods. It seems to me that he wanted it that way. Good for him and even better for the industry and profession! God bless him."

Kowalski co-founded BLF and served as its Founding Board Chairman. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame as part of the Bellwether Class of 2017.

"Bill McFaul was a pioneer and a force in the field of healthcare non-labor cost management," wrote Joe Colonna, BLF Philanthropy Committee volunteer, via LinkedIn and reprinted here with permission. He expressed McFaul's death as both a personal and professional loss. "His leadership lead the change of the profession from 'Materials Management' to 'Supply Chain Professionals.' Bill proved that Supply Chain had a role not only in cost management for healthcare providers but also played a significant role in supporting the mission to provide high-quality care to the communities they serve. Bill's contributions to industry are too many to list here but include leading the creation of a highly successful company with a focus on non-labor expense management and workforce efficiency. He also created a suite of workforce development tools focused on developing leaders in supply chain roles."

Colonna also shared with BLF how McFaul's professional influence extended to his personal growth and development. "In addition to the individual impact that Bill made on the industry, he helped and mentored many of us to become future leaders in our own right," he told BLF. "I know that he was one of the most influential people in my early career development. Bill helped me to find my path and channel my passion for how I could make a positive difference in my life and my career. I am eternally grateful to Bill and his wife Philly, for adopting me into the amazing McFaul family. While I am very saddened by Bill's passing, I am also very appreciative of the impact, both professionally and personally, that Bill has had on so many lives."

Colonna serves as Chief Supply Chain & Project Management, Piedmont Health.

"Bill's mind was always clicking and racing," said Rick Dana Barlow, Co- Founder and Executive Director, Bellwether League Foundation. "Perhaps two of the best ways to describe his thinking is illustrated in mass media. One is a car commercial on television where the announcer touches the hood of the car being promoted and that car separates into what seems like thousands of individual components to emphasize high- quality engineering. The other is Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark in the original "Iron Man" film where he manipulates a 3-D digital projection of his armor and its myriad component parts to improve performance. Bill liked to disassemble products, processes and scientific theories with the singular goal of making them better to help people. A simple idea with profound consequences.

"I first met Bill more than three decades ago very early in my professional journalism career as he served on my publication's editorial advisory board," Barlow continued. "Back then you didn't fire off a text or an email, but you physically called someone on the telephone. Bill either graciously answered the phone right away or returned my call a little later — but he always got back to me and spent many conversations explaining to me the intricacies of the industry as only he could. While I appreciated and respected his generosity and the amount of time spent with me from the onset, I needed perhaps another year to fully grasp the magnitude of someone of his experience, reputation, stature and wisdom sharing so much valuable intelligence with such a relative nobody recognized primarily by a printed byline and secondarily by periodic phone calls and trade show appearances."

McFaul's passion for pursuing what he saw as the next generation of clinical value analysis not only was emotionally and intellectually infectious but left you mentally fatigued after a five- minute animated conversation that felt like an open-minded ideation marathon.

McFaul invested more than five decades of his life in the profession of purchasing, materials management, resource management, supply chain management, value analysis and clinically oriented strategic and tactical modeling. His career began in the laboratory department of New York's Mount Sinai Hospital in the late 1960s where he served as a purchasing agent and internal auditor. By 1971, he served as the hospital's assistant director of purchasing, helping the hospital improve purchasing operations as well as its regional group purchasing organization to develop new concepts, one of which was a laboratory contracting program.

McFaul then embarked on a brief detour, joining a regional supplier in sales and marketing, but returned to hospital work, this time heading south into New Jersey to serve as a hospital-based director of purchasing, and also with a not-for-profit shared services corporation that he helped expand in breadth, reach and scope where he would meet and hire his future consulting business partner.

For the bulk of the 1970s, McFaul promoted the shared services model that increasingly featured a clinical focus among financial and operational discussions and processes. His consulting and educational efforts helped fortify group purchasing organizations (GPOs), motivating the formation of regional GPOs partnerships to compete with other GPOs striving toward a more national focus.

With Diana Lyons he formed McFaul & Lyons to develop detailed clinical value analysis and expense management programs that would be shared with thousands of healthcare organizations and even more administrative, clinical, financial and operational executives and professionals. He would serve as a professional mentor to hundreds who would achieve their own success and earn higher executive leadership positions within the industry.

Still, McFaul admitted that the work may have been exciting and all the people he met and helped were personally and professionally rewarding, but the pace was hectic and the traveling so frequent that it affected his health. With his family in mind, he determined the time was ripe to call it a career and focus on them as well as some hobbies and interests, including wine collecting and auto racing, leading to his initial retirement.

McFaul is survived by his wife of 41 years, Philomena McFaul; daughters Melanie Boe and her husband Erik, Joanna Gyulay and her fiancé Matthew Benson, and Alexis McFaul-Roe and her husband Kevin Roe; his brother, Patrick McFaul; and six grandchildren, Emily, Madeleine, Tyler, Lily, Kevin, and Miles, along with his great-granddaughter, Amelia. Bill is also survived by his nieces and nephews, Patrick McFaul Jr. and his wife Lisa, Phillip McFaul and his wife Traci, and Kathleen McFaul.

A memorial gathering was held on Wednesday, August 20, 2025, in Manchester, NJ.

For those who would like to make a contribution in his memory, the McFaul family requests donations be made to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, 501 St. Jude Place, Memphis, TN 38105.

The next edition of BLF's Leaders & Luminaries magazine will include a deeper and more professionally intimate portrait of McFaul, his influence, his motivations and his legacy.

About Bellwether League Foundation

Bellwether League Foundation™ (BLF) is an independent 501(c)3 nonprofit charitable foundation that offers programs to educate, endow and evaluate professionals in healthcare supply chain performance excellence. BLF accomplishes this through its primary operation, the Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Hall of Fame™, its growing philanthropic efforts, which include Collegiate Capstone Projects and scholarships and its various multimedia properties.

The Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Hall of Fame™ evaluates and validates professionals submitted for consideration in its three award programs: Bellwether Honorees, Ammer Honorees and Future Famers. The Hall of Fame also offers educational and professional development content via the annual Bellwether Leadership Symposium and its "Leaders & Luminaries" multimedia properties of online and printed content.

The Hall of Fame selects deceased, retired and currently active professionals with a minimum of 25 years of exemplary service and leadership performance in supply chain operations that meet its criteria to be recognized publicly as Bellwether Class Honorees. Future Famers represent supply chain professionals early in their healthcare careers (first 10-12 years) who do not yet qualify for Bellwether consideration but have contributed meaningfully to the profession and industry.

Honorees who receive the "Dean S. Ammer Award for Healthcare Supply Chain Performance Excellence" represent noteworthy executives and professionals in the middle of their careers who, through their innovative leadership and influential project management experience, best exemplify the practice and spirit of healthcare supply chain performance excellence.

To date, the Healthcare Supply Chain Leadership Hall of Fame has inducted 148 innovators, leaders and pioneers in healthcare supply chain management in seven distinct categories: Provider-Based Supply Chain Management, Manufacturing, Distribution, Group Purchasing, Consulting Services, Academia and Media. The Hall of Fame also has recognized 45 Future Famers and eight Ammer Honorees.

BLF's philanthropy efforts support capstone educational and developmental projects, grants and scholarships to college-bound high school students who plan to study supply chain curricula, current college students who major in supply chain-related careers and professionals who pursue continuing education through associations and universities.

BLF salutes its six sustaining sponsors at the Founding/Platinum level — GHX, Northwestern Medicine, Owens & Minor, Premier, Vizient and Wingfoot Media — and more than 20 additional sustaining sponsors at the Gold, Silver and Bronze levels. This dedicated group represents manufacturers, distributors, group purchasing organizations (GPOs), integrated delivery networks (IDNs), consulting firms, professional associations and media. BLF also appreciates and thanks its devoted corporate and professional donors for their generosity, participation and partnership.

Launched in late July 2007 by a group of influential veterans in the healthcare supply chain industry, BLF began as an independent 501(c)(6) not-for-profit corporation that upgraded to an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable foundation in January 2021

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