The pharmacy department at Edison, N.J.-based Hackensack Meridian Health is planning for growth as the network reports a multimillion-dollar net loss.
Hackensack is working to recruit seven divisional pharmacy leaders to work as liaisons between its 1,000 pharmacy workers and Will Carroll, PharmD, Hackensack's chief pharmacy officer and vice president of network pharmacy.
The new pharmacy leaders will offer oversight for the several pharmacies currently in the design and construction process, Dr. Carroll told Becker's. Having these "spanbreakers" to work between himself and the hundreds of employees can help "provide high-functioning support, strategic leadership and operational support," he said.
Hackensack saw its operating revenue fall more than 50 percent and a $460.8 million net loss in income from 2021 to 2022. In an effort to save costs, Dr. Carroll said the new positions will provide "tremendous value" through contracting, supply chain and inventory optimization.
"It's not that I go and I ask and they're just granted to me," he said. "You have to draft a business case, show the opportunity and show that with the right amount of investment, you can yield dividends and returns on that investment."
Some of the new pharmacy division leaders will work on redesigning the network's drug shortage process and creating a real-time dashboard to prevent, mitigate and monitor drug supply issues.
"We're in an interesting place where we're rapidly growing versus downsizing like other organizations," Dr. Carroll said. "It's just staying very busy supporting those things right now. I call it reimagining pharmacy. We're making sure pharmacy is a really decentralized, patient-facing service that goes beyond just getting the right (medication) to the right (patient) at the right time, but demonstrating the value pharmacy brings to Hackensack."