Carolyn Liptak, MBA, RPh brings more than 30 years of experience in the healthcare industry and currently serves as the Pharmacy Executive Director for Regulatory, Compliance & Financial Performance on the Vizient Center for Pharmacy Practice Excellence team. She has provided directorial leadership for inpatient, outpatient, retail and specialty pharmacy operations and clinical strategy. Her areas of expertise include regulatory compliance, revenue integrity, sterile compounding, and controlled substance diversion surveillance. She currently is a member of the Pharmacy Advisory Council at The Joint Commission. 

Prior to joining Vizient, Carolyn served in leadership roles at Texas Children’s Hospital and Memorial Hermann Health System in Houston as well as The Medical Center of Aurora and the University of Colorado Hemophilia & Thrombosis Center in Denver. Carolyn received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Louisiana at Monroe School of Pharmacy and a master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Houston Clear Lake. She is based remotely in Denver, Colorado

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

• To discuss reimbursement from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for medications covered under Medicare Part B 
• Identify ways to stay informed of new and changing status indicators and payment limits
• Recall the purpose of payment modifiers in the Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) and the requirements for compliance

Pharmacy Angle sat down with James Hall who is the Director of Pharmacy for a joint venture between Texas Health Resources and Advent Health in Fort Worth, Texas. James has been the Director at this facility for the past 24 years and has over four decades of total industry experience. 

Like many in this industry, James chose a career in pharmacy due to the impact and influence a family member had on his, in his case...his sister. Also like others, James faces many challenges in today's changing landscape but credits his staff for being nimble and resourceful in an order to make things work. From ensuring metrics are where they need to be for care and revenue purposes, to mentoring young professionals, to discussing pharmacists receiving provider status, lot's of great information to digest in this installment of Executive Insights. 

Jenna Stern, Associate Vice President of Regulatory Affairs & Public Policy, supports Vizient’s government relations, monitors federal regulatory and legislative developments, and helps communicate Vizient’s positions on developments most relevant to Vizient and its members. Prior to joining Vizient, Jenna served as the Director of Health Policy for the American Pharmacists Association and as a senior associate with Avalere, a DC-based healthcare consulting firm.

Jenna received her law degree with a concentration in health law from Case Western Reserve University and is a member of the Maryland bar. She is also a graduate of Brock University where she received her bachelor of science in health sciences.

Pharmacy Angle had the privilege of sitting down and visiting with Jamie Leonard, the Director of Pharmacy with Benefis Health System located in Great Falls, Montana. With over 30 years of experience and a passion for geriatrics, Jamie has seen how leadership of a unit has changed with so much more to manage today than what she was taught in school. 

With staffing challenges still facing the industry, Jamie shares a little behind what she calls "growing your own" and what her health system has done in terms of partnering with a local academic institution in her community to help grow the pipeline for technicians. So much more to learn too from this conversation! 

VPL TrajectRx empowers outpatient pharmacies by giving them the cloud-based shipping, tracking and compliance solution they need to build cost-conscious, stronger, and smarter last-mile operations. Created for pharmacists by pharmacists, our clinically minded platform gets prescriptions out the door, tracks and traces them to their destination, communicates shipping updates to patients and staff, and compiles necessary reporting for proof of delivery. By minimizing distribution errors, enhancing operational efficiency, and reducing time spent on the phone, TrajectRx ensures a streamlined and effective pharmacy workflow.

Daniel Roth, the Administrative Director of Pharmacy at Cox Health located in Southwest Missouri, visited with Pharmacy Angle to talk about his background, changes he has seen within the industry, and predictions he has for the industry. With a extensive experience in informatics and automation, listen to hear what Daniel has to say which could help everyone run their pharmacies more efficiently. 

Dr. Alfred L'altrelli, Senior Director of Pharmacy at the flagship hospital, Presbyterian Shadyside of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania has spent his years since graduation doing a variety of functions within the pharmacy space, but has focused in on building teams, residency programs, building clinical services, and looking at operational efficiencies. 

During the course of our visit with Al, he discussed how he believes the workforce is the biggest change and challenge facing professionals today, and what those entering the industry are looking for now as compared to when he graduated and what's contributed to that shift in focus. He believes that recruitment of professionals to pharmacy needs to start at a younger age and should help change stereotypes of what they may think the profession is.  Additionally, we discuss other challenges such as tight margins, technology and the enhanced services it can provide to patients, and new roles pharmacist will likely start doing in the near future such as molecular and efficacy in radiopharmaceuticals.

Lisa Baird, Vice President of Pharmacy Operations for Earnest Health in Post Falls, Idaho sat down with Pharmacy Angle to discuss a variety of topics starting with what led her to career in pharmacy. Lisa goes on to provide her thoughts on share her thoughts on what she sees the future has in store for hospital pharmacists including the prescribing roles and the constantly evolving technology, including AI. 

Like her colleagues and peers around the country, Lisa is also experience challenges in both drug and staffing shortages, balancing of financial and economic responsibilities, and much more which she further elaborates in this insightful conversation. 

Ken Perez is a current consultant and the former VP of Healthcare Policy and Government Affairs for Omnicell, where he has worked for a total of 15 years. He is the host of the Future of Pharmacy Podcast and has been a health policy columnist for hfm, the monthly journal of the Healthcare Financial Management Association, for over 10 years. Ken also serves on the board of the ASHP Foundation and the Dean’s Executive Council for UCSF’s School of Nursing. Ken holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations with an emphasis in economics from Stanford University and a MBA with a concentration in finance from UCLA Anderson.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

• Understand the magnitude of the healthcare labor shortage
• Identify the primary contributing factors to the healthcare labor shortage
• Assess the impacts of the labor shortage on the healthcare system
• Examine and evaluate short-term and long-term solutions to the healthcare labor shortage

Pharmacy Angle caught up with the Director of Pharmacy Services at Capstone Health Alliance (Concord, NC), Fred Pane, RPh, FASHP, FABC, who's a busy man as he works with nearly three hundred acute care hospitals and close to twenty thousand non-acute entities like ambulatory surgery centers, long term care, and private practices. 

Fred has a wealth of knowledge he's accumulated over his many years within the hospital pharmacy industry, and brings various perspectives from having been in a hospital setting to now working for Capstone. He has become the "go-to" person when when it comes to understanding legislation and policies that are coming from Washington, but for this video, we focused our conversation on a number of topics including drug shortages, costs, and changes he's seen first-hand within the industry over the years.