William Pong, PharmD, MBA, serves as Administrative Director of Pharmacy Servicecs for Loyola University Health System.
On April 4th, Dr. Pong will speak at Becker's Hospital Review 10th Annual Meeting. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place April 1-4, 2019 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Dr. Pong's session, click here.
Question: What do innovators/entrepreneurs from outside healthcare need to better understand about hospital and health system leaders?
William Pong: Innovators / entrepreneurs need to understand the complexities of the health care system including various stakeholders, competing goals with this diverse landscape. There are many unmet needs in different space (i.e. care delivery, regulation compliance, quality metrics, and financial/revenue cycle, etc.) and engaging the experts in those specific areas can help navigate through this.
Q: What one strategic initiative will demand the most of your time and energy in 2019?
WP: Development and implementation of an ambulatory – specialty pharmacy network to support patients in post-acute care and chronic disease management. This includes building out new programs and expanding current infrastructure in areas like retail pharmacies, specialty pharmacy, and home infusion pharmacy.
Q: Healthcare takes a lot of heat for not innovating quickly. What's your take on this?
WP: My answer is yes and no. At times it seems like we are moving like an elephant but we have come a long way over the past decade. We have a vast number of technology in practice such as EMR, BCMA, RFID, Smart pumps, E-prescribing, and tele-medicine. Change is difficult in the health care space due to complexity and the number of stakeholders but we are catching up as more IT is being developed and introduced to our industry.