The term "hospital pharmacy" is becoming a misnomer.
Inpatient hospital pharmacies remain important to organizations, but today's industry-leading chief pharmacy officers need to juggle a plethora of care settings to stay with the times, leaders told Becker's. Examples include ambulatory sites, outpatient infusion centers, home infusion services and upgraded technology, according to Nilesh Desai, chief pharmacy officer of Baptist Health in Louisville, Ky.
"The chief pharmacy officers in the past that were more focused on the inpatient side are becoming obsolete," said Denise Scarpelli, PharmD, vice president and chief pharmacy officer for the University of Chicago Medicine. "You really have to understand specialty pharmacy, infusion and payers."
Becoming complacent means you're behind, Madeline Camejo, PharmD, said.
Dr. Camejo is the vice president of pharmacy services and chief pharmacy officer at Baptist Health South Florida in Coral Gables, Fla. To keep pace with the growing behavioral health market, she is leading a movement to train the system's pharmacists as wellness coaches.
For example, wellness pharmacists are not only helping diabetic patients manage their medications but asking, "How can we help you eat healthier?' 'How can we get you to help you sleep better?" Dr. Camejo said.
Many lucrative medicines in the research and development pipeline are infusion therapies, and health systems that are not building more infusion centers will be playing catch-up in three to five years, she said.
To achieve their own goals, Kavish Choudhary, PharmD, chief pharmacy officer at Salt Lake City's University of Utah Health, and Desi Kotis, PharmD, chief pharmacy executive at UCSF in San Francisco, are leaning on their interpersonal skills.
"It may be my hard skills, it might be pharmacology [that] got me this far, but my soft skills, my people skills or ability to work with others, will make me successful going forward," Dr. Choudhary said.
Dr. Kotis echoed his thoughts: "I think that's something that's come back into vogue, or into fashion, which I'm glad about: networking and meeting people."
Dr. Kotis and Sue Mashni, PharmD, chief pharmacy officer at New York City-based Mount Sinai Health System, both described the CPO role as a musical conductor who can lead a diverse group while articulating their needs to other C-suite leaders.
"The chief pharmacy officer needs to be the chief strategy officer as well as the chief cheerleader on what pharmacists can do," Dr. Mashni said.