Becker's asked chief pharmacy officers from hospitals and health systems across the U.S. to share their focus for the remainder of the year.
The 14 executives featured in this article are all speaking at the Becker's Healthcare Chief Pharmacy Officer Summit, from Nov. 13-14, at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago.
To learn more about this event, click here.
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As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who will speak at our conference. The following are answers from our speakers at the event.
Question: What is your focus for the second half of the year?
Karen McConnell, PharmD. System Vice President of Pharmacy Enterprise and Chief Pharmacy Officer at CommonSpirit Health (Chicago): The CommonSpirit pharmacy enterprise will continue to work on standardization and optimization for the last half of 2024. We are focusing on value capture initiatives to ensure we are contributing to our financial health in a meaningful way. We are also rolling out an updated KPI dashboard that will give insights into pharmacy spend, specifically delineating separately reimbursable drug spend and from the drug spend that is not. We are focusing on medication quality and safety initiatives as well, spreading best practices across our system.
Nilesh Desai. Chief Pharmacy Officer of Baptist Health System (San Antonio): Workforce retention strategies, growth in ambulatory practices, and inventory management for our central pharmacy services center project. Additionally we will be focusing on our PBM with managing the formulary and costs across the system. Work will also continue in our technology front with many initiatives including benchmarking for areas within pharmacy.
Seth Hartman, PharmD. Chief Pharmacy Information Officer of UChicago Medicine: As an academic medical center, we follow our academic calendar, so these next six months are the beginning of our new fiscal year. I am focusing on organizing and standing up our projects and enacting our plans that we set for the upcoming year. These plans include migrating third party systems into single platforms, increasing our use of robotic process automation to manage our 340B programs, monitoring the use and preparing for expansions of our LLM applications, and a continued focus on our future growth and how to better align to the vision set by the Autonomous Pharmacy Advisory Board (APAB).
With an upcoming expansion in our physical infrastructure for our cancer services line, we have the opportunity to set plans in motion for the pharmacy servicing these patients with a goal aligned to the APAB to replace manual, error-prone activities with automated processes that are safer and more efficient to better use our talent on high-value tasks to improve clinician satisfaction and patient outcomes.
With schools of pharmacy showing lower enrollment year over year, the time is now to solve for better automation so in a future challenged with pharmacist availability we can enable our skilled resources to devote more time to patient care and less time to the operations of the pharmacy.
Lisa Kroon, PharmD. Vice Dean of UCSF School of Pharmacy; Assistant Chief Pharmacy Officer and Professor of Clinical Pharmacy at UCSF Health (San Francisco): I will be focused on executing our new ambulatory care strategy and vision for ambulatory pharmacy services, which is the provision of pharmacy care services across ambulatory care settings to ensure accessible and optimal medication therapy and improve health outcomes. UCSF Health is opening two outpatient pharmacies this year where we will implement innovative pharmacy care services, in addition to standard, core services such as vaccinations. We've also hired additional ambulatory care pharmacists who are practice partners with physicians and other members of the care team and will provide comprehensive medication management services with a keen eye toward health equity and assessment of social drivers of health.
Matthew Jenkins, PharmD. Vice President and Chief Pharmacy Officer of VCU Health System (Richmond, Va.): As part of VCU Health's strategic focus to meet our patients' needs, our pharmacy team is hyper focused on opportunities around patient access, particularly those related to medication management. As the top safety net provider for Virginia, it is imperative that we continue to work with our clinical teams to identify and act upon how we can provide easy access to the interventions that our patient’s need to receive the best care. This focus is helping us identify opportunities for our pharmacy workforce to also practice at the top of their license(s).
Andre D. Harvin, PharmD. Chief Pharmacy Officer and Vice President of Pharmacy Services at Cone Health (Greensboro, N.C.): For the second half of the year, we will focus on investing in a greater business architecture for our pharmacy enterprise to enhance operational efficiency and patient outcomes. We are committed to expanding our infusion footprint to meet the growing demand for specialized treatments. Additionally, we are retooling our pharmacy and therapeutics (P&T) committee, emphasizing the value of new medications being added to our formulary to ensure they deliver both clinical and economic benefits.
Ghalib Abbasi, PharmD. System Director of Pharmacy Informatics at Houston Methodist Hospital System (Texas): We're focused on expanding deployment of our pharmacy delivery robots systemwide during the second half of 2024. The goal is to enhance medication turn-around time and clinician satisfaction, as well as providing our pharmacy staff with handy tools that conform to our continuous campuses' expansions.
Will Carroll, PharmD. Vice President of Network Pharmacy at Hackensack Meridian Health (Edison, N.J.): We are maintaining our focus on our people, our patients, and our financial responsibilities by providing quality medication management, patient-centered and cost-effective pharmaceutical care. We are beginning to plan for our 2025 pharmacy budgets while also building strategies to best leverage pharmacy services to support our medical and nursing colleagues. Our focus is to optimize the patient experience, medication access and adherence, and expand ambulatory care services. Hospital at home expansion and 340B optimization remain top priorities as well.
Melanie D. Joe, PharmD. Chief Pharmacy Officer of UCI Health (Orange, Calif.); Associate Director and Founding Associate Dean of Pharmacy Professional Affairs at the University of California, Irvine, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences: The UCI Health Pharmacy Team will focus on developing ambulatory patient care strategies, including implementation of home infusion pharmacy services and further growth of clinical pharmacy medication management. We are opening an infusion center pharmacy and a retail pharmacy at the new UCI Health-Irvine Medical Complex in July, which will expand access to academic medicine across Orange County.
Our aim is to provide holistic, patient-centered care for specialty acute services in addition to offering solutions in the ambulatory space. We will continue to strengthen our academic footprint with deployment of a pharmacy technician internship, partnering with local schools to generate a pool of highly skilled technicians to address the national labor shortage and create partnerships within our community. Further, UCI Health Pharmacy will increase the number and types of advanced practice pharmacy educational offerings to interns from the inaugural class of the UC Irvine School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Nicole Shoquist. Chief Pharmacy Officer of JPS Health Network (Fort Worth, Texas): A key focus area for me going into the second half of the year, is expanding the scope and breadth of our specialty pharmacy capabilities which will include building out a new on-campus specialty pharmacy to serve our community. We're also working to establish a direct to employer specialty pharmacy narrow network for local and regional employers. We are doing all of this in collaboration with our pharmacy platform partner.
Sebastian Hamilton, PharmD. Chief Pharmacy Officer of Operations and Community/Ambulatory Partnerships at Boston Medical Center: My focus for the second half of the year:
1. Continue to watch the GLP-1 agonists space (and other upcoming therapies new to market) and adjust our access and 340B strategy accordingly.
a. Like many in our environment, we are experiencing challenges with stable supplies of these agents due to the emerging favorable impact on many co-morbidities related to obesity coupled with the popularity of reaching one’s ideal weight and visual appeal. Developing criteria that provides an equitable distribution to the former patient cohort is a priority to help mitigate the sequela of obesity thereby improving the quality of life of patients.
b. The landscape of 340B is in flux, seemingly almost daily, and with the GLP-1 agonists being highly prescribed creates a 340B saving opportunity. However, these variables pose challenges that must be monitored and analyzed closely as we start to experience payer carve-outs else the 340B savings opportunity will shift. Staying ahead of these will keep 340B program savings intact.
2. Contract pharmacy 340B manufacturer carve-outs.
a. The savings to 340B entities who have contract pharmacy arrangements (e.g. Community Health Centers) have experienced less savings due to a spate of manufacturer drug carve-outs over the past ~18 months. This is a complex space to monitor as more drugs are added to the exclusion list and/or more steps are added to the qualification of claims (340B ESP) that the entity must comply with. Helping entities negotiate this space compliantly and leverage data systems to protect 340B program savings will be key to keeping them financially solvent so they can continue their important role providing access to quality equitable care to patient populations who need it most.
3. Building scale of operations while being mindful of viable strategies that will keep expenses manageable.
a. As a safety-net organization we constantly face growing prescription volume with pressures on how to manage expenses yet provide services responsibly. Labor productivity analysis to get to the best-in-class goals, efficient and applicable automation technologies, supporting and training the pharmacy team to practice at the top of their licenses, and centralized services are some key initiatives we have invested in and have found valuable to keep pace while controlling expenses to protect profitability. Continued focus on these and others to optimize the return on investment is an ongoing focus throughout the year.
Robert Fink, PharmD. System Vice President and Chief Pharmacy Executive of UofL Health (Louisville, Ky.): Areas of focus for the remainder of 2024, include pharmacy technician recruiting and retention. Five years ago, we implemented a pharmacy technician career ladder with four levels of advancement, and several specialized roles including revenue cycle auditing, 340B program auditing, controlled substance accountability, informatics/automation specialist, inventory management and procurement, and medication reconciliation.
As our organization grows with plans to open a 4th oncology infusion center, IV trained technicians have become vital to our organization; therefore, we plan to revise our ladder to elevate our IV trained technicians as well as advance those in specialty roles to a higher level.
As we maintain our own employee health plan PBM, another important project is the relocation of one of our retail operations to a newly renovated and expanded location to better serve our patients and employees. Also with the PBM, we will implement strategies to better manage our costs associated with GLP-1 agents, including optimization of our MTM clinics and expansion of our 340B program.
This spring, we opened a new inpatient facility and have seen near capacity increases in patient census. As a result, we are working to expand pharmacy operating hours as well as stand up both retail and non-oncology infusion services. Furthermore, we will be working to prepare our pharmacy infrastructure to accommodate additional expansion related to potential acquisitions.
We have added several clinical pharmacist specialist roles in critical care, emergency medicine, and oncology. Therefore, we will focus attention on achieving the return on investment through improved quality patient outcomes and cost savings through appropriate medication management. This is important as we plan to open a new patient care tower by year end and will need additional staff to meet our patient care needs. Furthermore, we will continue work to implement commercial payer billing for our pharmacist specialists working in hospital based clinics.
Darren Evans, PharmD. System Vice President of Pharmacy Services at Phoebe Putney Health System (Albany, Ga.): For the second half of the year, I will focus on completing initiatives outlined in our strategic plan. Several automation projects will be finalized at our acute care hospitals to enhance inventory management, streamline OR workflows, and optimize our medication delivery process. In addition, many exciting initiatives continue to be a priority within our ambulatory pharmacy services. Most notably, I will concentrate on completing the build and move into our new specialty pharmacy, scheduled to open in October 2024. Although our specialty pharmacy has been operational since 2021, this multimillion-dollar investment will significantly improve patient access and provide the infrastructure needed to implement additional services to continue exceptional care for the citizens of Southwest Ga.
Elizabeth Oyekan, PharmD. Vice President of Pharmacy and Imaging Services at Stanford (Calif.) Health Care; Chief Pharmacy Officer of Stanford Health Care and Stanford Health Care Tri-Valley: As we move through FY 2024 and into 2025, the Stanford Pharmacy Enterprise continues to leverage our six established strategic imperatives aligned with key initiatives to guide our efforts: transforming care delivery, operational excellence, people and partnerships, quality and research, infrastructure and business capabilities, and financial strength.
A key component of transforming care delivery was the creation of foundational roles for clinical pharmacists and technicians, focusing on the Medication AREAS (Adherence, Reconciliation, Equity & Education, Affordability, and Safety) for all patients. Over a six-month period, our inpatient AREAS pilot program showed notable results, including a 30% reduction in length of stay, a 15% reduction in readmissions, and a 20% improvement in HCAHPS scores compared to the control group.
Looking ahead to the second half of 2024 and into 2025, we will focus on enhancing operational efficiencies in our ambulatory care and inpatient services to improve patient capacity, access, and overall experience. Expanding our specialty pharmacy and infusion services, along with optimizing our supply chain and business operations, will be key to supporting our financial strength goals. Our commitment to clinical and service quality, as well as our investigational drug services, will keep us at the forefront of innovation and research.
We are also committed to developing our Digital, Analytics, Robotics, and Technology (DART) infrastructure to enhance both operational excellence and patient care. In addition, we will continue investing in our leadership development journey to build and sustain high-performing teams and ensure strong bench strength.
Our strategic plan and blueprint will ensure we remain adaptive and forward-thinking. By adhering to these strategic imperatives and focusing on key areas, we aim to enhance care delivery, improve operational efficiency, foster partnerships, and ensure financial sustainability. Our commitment to innovation and excellence will drive us as we contribute to the future of pharmacy and healthcare.