Cleveland Clinic's new chief pharmacy officer has a simple goal: No surprises.
Before joining Cleveland Clinic on Feb. 26, Lindsey Amerine, PharmD, was the interim chief pharmacy officer at UNC Health, a 16-hospital system based in Chapel Hill, N.C. She now leads more than 1,500 pharmacy employees and receives reports from leaders in Ohio, Florida, Las Vegas, London and Abu Dhabi.
As a new employee and executive at Cleveland Clinic, she's focused on not disrupting what's already working well.
"I think there's always that question when you have a new leader come in: What is going to change?" she told Becker's.
To quell this worry and gain trust, Dr. Amerine first set boundaries and expectations with her team.
"I only implemented a couple rules when I started, and one of them was 'no surprises,'" she said. "If you think something may be a surprise, feel free to send it, I'm happy to triage it. There might be something that's just a good FYI, and then there's things that I might need to escalate. I don't want [my team] to have to sift through what those are and spend a lot of time figuring out what to send me. Using the rule of no surprises — like, just let me know if something comes up — that's been helpful. It has opened up a lot of lines of communication right away."
In return, she tries to ensure her co-workers aren't surprised by her directions and decisions. To achieve this, Dr. Amerine asks her direct reports these four questions:
1. What do you like about the Cleveland Clinic that you want to preserve and why?
2. What do you hope I do?
3. What do you hope I don't do?
4. What are you scared I might do?
In addition to building connectivity and visibility, the answers inform her three- to five-year roadmap for the system's pharmacy department, she said.
As she makes rounds and visits the health system's facilities, Dr. Amerine said she has experienced multiple positive "aha" moments: She's constantly asking employees, "Do you know that no one else is doing that right now?"
"There's a lot of things that we already do that I would consider to be the best practice that's out there. I don't know [if] the team members who have built it or that are working in it know that that's the best model," Dr. Amerine said, adding that most employees were unaware of the system's unique practices.
Some of the practice models are under anonymous review for potential awards, so she couldn't share specifics with Becker's but said they exist in clinical practice, drug compounding and operations.
As Dr. Amerine forms and strengthens a relationship with Cleveland Clinic, she said her No. 1 priority is understanding the history of the century-old organization.
"I didn't come in with, 'This is exactly what we're going to do and we're going to be this and we ought to follow that,'" she said. "I really just want us to understand first, where are we, what do we do well, and then maybe what opportunities do we have?"