Becker's asked pharmacy executives from hospitals and health systems across the U.S. to share their plans on improving patient care in the near future.
The six executives featured in this article are all speaking at the Becker's Healthcare Spring Chief Pharmacy Officer Summit, April 30 - May 1, 2025, at the Hyatt Regency Chicago.
To learn more about this event, click here.
If you would like to join as a speaker or a reviewer, contact Mariah Muhammad at mmuhammad@beckershealthcare.com or agendateam@beckershealthcare.com.
For more information on sponsorship opportunities or vendor access-only badges, contact Jessica Cole at jcole@beckershealthcare.com.
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 top priority for improving patient care over the next 2-3 years?
Will Carroll, PharmD. Vice President of Network Pharmacy at Hackensack Meridian Health (Edison, N.J.): Our top priority for improving patient care will be improving medication adherence. Non-adherence to prescribed therapies remains a leading cause of poor clinical outcomes, including hospital readmissions. To address this, we will focus on two primary areas: medication education and medication access. Our comprehensive, patient-centered approach will include personalized medication counseling, collaborative care teams with embedded pharmacists, and leveraging our population health pharmacy team to identify high-risk patients and pair them with targeted interventions. We will utilize these teams and our retail pharmacies to maximize the number of patients leaving our medical centers and health & wellness centers with medications in hand. This approach ensures that patients receive the medications they need, understand their treatment plans, and follow them consistently.
Nilesh Desai. Chief Pharmacy Officer of Baptist Health (LaGrange, Ky.): At Baptist Health the focus is to make medication access easier for our patients, leverage technology, where possible, to enhance clinician and patient experience. With Pharmacy deserts becoming reality, health system pharmacies have a crucial role to play in providing medication management care to our patients and communities. The other focused approaches will be on data management, pharmacy benefit management and home infusion enhancements enabling growth of pharmacy services across the health system and our communities.
Onisis Stefas, PharmD. CEO of Vivo Health, Northwell Health (New Hyde Park, N.Y.): Our top priority over the next several years at VIVOHealth, Northwell's outpatient pharmacy organization, is to provide integrated pharmaceutical care that effectively supports patients throughout their healthcare journey. We collaborate closely with healthcare providers from hospital discharge through transitions to primary and specialty care, ensuring patients understand their medications and maintain continuous access.
Our comprehensive services include medication reconciliation, personalized counseling, convenient delivery, and ongoing monitoring to address any medication-related questions and optimize therapy. This approach improves clinical outcomes, adherence, and communication, leading to a better overall patient experience and raising health in our communities. As more care transitions to outpatient settings, our commitment is to ensure an integrated and seamless experience for patients across all stages of care.
This holistic approach is designed to empower patients and foster better management of their health. By prioritizing these areas, we aim to make significant strides in enhancing patient care and community health.
Bonnie Levin, PharmD. Vice President of Pharmacy Services at MedStar Health (Columbia, Md.): Improving patient care is a multifaceted challenge, and integrating across settings is a huge task. A top priority over the next few years from a pharmacy lens is to enhance patient-centered care through technology and data integration. Here are a few important areas to focus on:
- Telehealth Expansion: Increasing access to care through telehealth services to reach more patients, especially in underserved areas.
- Data Interoperability: Ensuring that patient data can be easily shared across different healthcare systems and settings to improve coordination and reduce errors.
- Patient Engagement Tools: Implementing apps and platforms that allow patients to interact with pharmacists for therapy management, self-manage their medications, schedule refills.
- Quality Improvement Initiatives: Focusing on continuous quality improvement to assure that the operational, clinical and technical aspects of pharmacy are optimized.
Alicia Juska, PharmD. Director of Pharmacy at Endeavor Health Swedish Hospital (Chicago): The most important priority will be guaranteeing seamless patient access to essential medications. With a growing number of specialized, high-cost therapies entering the market and a complex healthcare system to navigate, it is crucial that we cultivate a pharmacy infrastructure that combines expertise, safety, and cost-effective management with a multi-disciplinary approach to ensure site of care, specialist, and ethical considerations are aligned. This will ensure that patients continue to receive optimal care without disruption.
Tim Cmelik. Chief Pharmacy of Central Arkansas Veterans Health System (Little Rock): There are several potential paths for improving patient safety. The one that I am most passionate about is promoting a patient drug profile that is current for the patient's needs and avoids inappropriate, unnecessary, and unsafe medications remaining on the patient's drug profile after they have served their useful and intended purpose. This area can be called polypharmacy.