Latest / Pharmacy Podcast Network / The Pennsylvania Pharmacist Association's Annual Conference Post Show | Part One

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The Pennsylvania Pharmacist Association's Annual Conference Post Show | Part One · Pharmacy Podcast Network

0:01
Speaker 1: Your patients need convenient and cost efficient healthcare, and in
0:04
Speaker 1: the increasingly competitive pharmacy environment, independent pharmacies shouldn't have to struggle.
0:09
Speaker 1: That's where Value Drug Company steps in. At Value Drug
0:15
Speaker 1: we treat our members like family, providing first rate, personalized
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Speaker 1: service and the support they deserve. While you provide exceptional
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Speaker 1: care for your patients, we provide you comprehensive solutions to
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Speaker 1: help you become efficient, productive, and profitable. We offer online
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Speaker 1: distribution center to maintain quality and control. We help your
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Speaker 1: long term care pharmacy get connected to the right service
0:39
Speaker 1: providers and access your market, and we don't stop there.
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Speaker 1: Learn more about how Value Drug can help your pharmacy
0:46
Speaker 1: thrive at Value drug Co dot com. That's Value drugc
0:50
Speaker 1: dot com. Value Drug Company is a proud sponsor of
0:54
Speaker 1: the Pharmacy Podcast Network.
1:07
Speaker 2: You are listening to the global network of podcasters dedicated
1:11
Speaker 2: to the pharmacy profession. Welcome to the Pharmacy Podcast Network.
1:25
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Pennsylvania Pharmacists Association's annual conference post show
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Speaker 1: presented by the Pharmacy Podcast Network. In this three part series,
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Speaker 1: we bring you exclusive interviews from the conference held February
1:38
Speaker 1: twentieth through the twenty second at the Hilton Harrisburg. You'll
1:41
Speaker 1: hear real conversations with industry leaders including doctor Kyle McCormick,
1:46
Speaker 1: John de James, the American Pharmacist Association CEO, doctor Michael Hoague,
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Speaker 1: and many more. This series is proudly sponsored by Value
1:55
Speaker 1: Drug Company and the Pennsylvania Pharmacist Care Network PPCN as
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Speaker 1: they celebrate their tenth anniversary of advancing pharmacists led patient
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Speaker 1: care across the Commonwealth.
2:10
Speaker 3: PPA twenty twenty six. Here, Hey, I have two special guests.
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Speaker 4: Marge, I'm going to start with you. Introduce your soft
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Speaker 4: to our listeners.
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Speaker 5: Hi, Doug Margie Leiden. I'm a pharmacist for over four decades.
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Speaker 5: I currently work for a Value Drug Company as the
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Speaker 5: manager of long Term Care Strategy. I've worked in community practice, industry,
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Speaker 5: long term care, compounding, pretty much touched almost all areas
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Speaker 5: of pharmacy.
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Speaker 3: Absolutely and Kathy introduce yourself as well.
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Speaker 6: Kathy Greendizio. I'm the owner of Dandal Pharmacy. I'm a
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Speaker 6: pharmacist where a long term care pharmacy. Closed Door also
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Speaker 6: had owned a retail pharmacy that I had sold back
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Speaker 6: in twenty nineteen before going into the long term scare
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Speaker 6: care space.
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Speaker 4: And I am also on the board of directors a
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Speaker 4: Value Drug.
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Speaker 6: Company from the vice chairwoman of Value Drug Company's chairman
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Speaker 6: of the board, and I am also their political action
3:02
Speaker 6: committee Value Packed.
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Speaker 3: Here women, all right, let's talk about the future of
3:09
Speaker 3: entrepreneurship in pharmacy. Let's talk about independent community pharmacy, how
3:13
Speaker 3: it's shifting, how it's growing.
3:15
Speaker 4: Margie, I want to.
3:16
Speaker 3: Start with you long term care pharmacy at home. I
3:20
Speaker 3: used to call that back in the day combo shop.
3:23
Speaker 3: But back in the day we didn't really even get
3:25
Speaker 3: paid for half the stuff that some of the changes
3:27
Speaker 3: that are coming down now with what truly is long
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Speaker 3: term care pharmacy at home, So talk to us about that.
3:33
Speaker 3: What's the opportunity out there for independent community pharmacies in
3:36
Speaker 3: that space.
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Speaker 5: Well, the opportunity is huge and I've seen it with
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Speaker 5: the pharmacies I work with over one hundred and twenty
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Speaker 5: independent community pharmacies now that are Value Drug members in
3:47
Speaker 5: this space, and nationally we're seeing it grow.
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Speaker 4: I think there's a lot of contributing factors.
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Speaker 5: A huge part of it is the aging population, the
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Speaker 5: lack of nursing home beds, especially since COVID people's desire
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Speaker 5: to age in their homes rather than go into a facility.
4:05
Speaker 5: The reimbursement is favorable, so it's financially viable, and I
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Speaker 5: find it professionally rewarding because we're doing so much more
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Speaker 5: than just putting medications of compliance, packaging and delivering it.
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Speaker 5: We're getting involved with the healthcare team.
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Speaker 3: Kathy, how do we grow more pharmacy owners to backfill
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Speaker 3: the collapse of thousands of pharmacies across the nation where
4:31
Speaker 3: we have pockets of pharmacy deserts. We desperately need more
4:34
Speaker 3: pharmacies to arise, but we need them to be strong,
4:37
Speaker 3: we need them to be thriving.
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Speaker 4: How do we do that?
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Speaker 6: Well, that's a very hard question, and I think we're
4:42
Speaker 6: all trying to work together to get through that. One
4:44
Speaker 6: of the problems is I feel that starting at the
4:47
Speaker 6: pharmacy school level, there isn't a lot of push to
4:50
Speaker 6: put people into the independent community. While they want them
4:54
Speaker 6: to do residencies, which is wonderful, but we need to
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Speaker 6: also remember that there are other aspects pharmacy that we
5:00
Speaker 6: should be pushing in and introducing them to, and so
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Speaker 6: I think having more collaboration with the pharmacy schools would
5:07
Speaker 6: be huge in that setting, so that we could have
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Speaker 6: more of the younger generation be exposed to entrepreneurship and
5:15
Speaker 6: being able to be your own boss and make a
5:17
Speaker 6: difference in people's healthcare every day in your independent community.
5:21
Speaker 6: Having said that, I also think that it would be
5:23
Speaker 6: important that we give people in pharmacy schools more exposure
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Speaker 6: to business courses as not being an elective, but actually
5:31
Speaker 6: being part of the academic process for them so that
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Speaker 6: they wouldn't be scared to take on being a business owner.
5:39
Speaker 6: I know at my age group in the fifties, you're
5:42
Speaker 6: always looking for what is your succession plan and who
5:45
Speaker 6: is going to be the next generation for you? And
5:47
Speaker 6: where are those pharmacists that are coming up that are hungry.
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Speaker 4: To be in those stores.
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Speaker 6: We have a lot of opportunities for reimbursement now, you know,
5:56
Speaker 6: with the pharmacists being able to be providers in Pennsylvania,
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Speaker 6: that's going to open some more reimbursement pathways, because again
6:03
Speaker 6: you can't depending on traditional pharmacy. You have to look
6:06
Speaker 6: for all the areas that you can make money in
6:09
Speaker 6: pharmacy and capitalize on that.
6:12
Speaker 3: Margie, how is Value Drug positioning itself to strengthen a
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Speaker 3: new pharmacy owner, maybe somebody that is an entrepreneur, a
6:21
Speaker 3: woman that in pharmacy that wants to start her own business, Like,
6:26
Speaker 3: what are you guys doing to help sport that?
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Speaker 5: Well, we teach a lot of the business information that
6:32
Speaker 5: pharmacy students don't get, and we actually have a success
6:36
Speaker 5: story now. A young woman who graduated last year. She
6:39
Speaker 5: didn't start from.
6:42
Speaker 4: Cold start.
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Speaker 5: Recall it, It wasn't a non existent She bought the pharmacy
6:46
Speaker 5: where she had worked throughout her her.
6:48
Speaker 4: Pharmacy school leaders and through the support.
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Speaker 5: Of Value Drug has coached her through everything from contracting
6:56
Speaker 5: to redesigning or the pharmacy on the front end for
7:02
Speaker 5: maximizing profitability, to working with your coaching or on opportunities
7:08
Speaker 5: that she may not have been aware of. And we
7:10
Speaker 5: really stick very close and do a lot of handholding
7:12
Speaker 5: where it's necessary, and then launch them to be independent.
7:16
Speaker 5: We don't want them to be overly dependent on us,
7:18
Speaker 5: but we want them to succeed and we will stay
7:21
Speaker 5: by them.
7:22
Speaker 4: While they're growing and learning.
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Speaker 6: One thing is they've been very strategic with our strategy
7:27
Speaker 6: team at that in direct company to have a buy
7:29
Speaker 6: sell program where if you are thinking that you are
7:32
Speaker 6: getting to the point of your career where you're ready
7:35
Speaker 6: to make that move into selling your store, you start
7:38
Speaker 6: having those conversations, Let's see if we can match someone
7:41
Speaker 6: to you. Let's keep those stores independent. Let's keep our
7:44
Speaker 6: communities having access to those independent pharmacies that are so
7:48
Speaker 6: integral to our communities.
7:51
Speaker 3: All right, So, I think of the tenth grader, eleventh
7:55
Speaker 3: grader or twelfth grader in school might be strong in stem.
8:00
Speaker 3: How do we get more more of our community understand
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Speaker 3: what pharmacists bring. I mean, they bring a whole different
8:07
Speaker 3: career opportunity today than what might have been presented you
8:11
Speaker 3: twenty years ago.
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Speaker 4: How do we cultivate that well?
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Speaker 5: I think first we have to dispel some of the.
8:19
Speaker 7: Not myth.
8:19
Speaker 5: There is a reality that pharmacy is a difficult space
8:23
Speaker 5: right now, but the opportunities, especially an independent.
8:27
Speaker 4: Pharmacy, are phenomenal.
8:29
Speaker 5: We need to let people know it's not all the
8:31
Speaker 5: bad stuff that we hear about horrendous work hours and
8:35
Speaker 5: you know, work life balance, et cetera. And then capitalize
8:38
Speaker 5: on the fact that these are the interests. And I
8:41
Speaker 5: know for myself, I have been really fortunate to have
8:45
Speaker 5: tremendous flexibility throughout my career. And I have three children,
8:51
Speaker 5: and as I lays them, I'm more between doing a
8:54
Speaker 5: couple of fourteen hour shifts or a lot of four
8:58
Speaker 5: hour shifts, or working nights, just working in different spaces,
9:03
Speaker 5: and I think let them know that you can still
9:07
Speaker 5: have a family, hobbies, whatever else is important to you
9:10
Speaker 5: in life, and still have a really fulfilling career.
9:15
Speaker 3: Did you recruit any of them to become pharmacists, because
9:19
Speaker 3: I can't recruit any of my daughters to become a pharmacists.
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Speaker 5: None of my kids, they actually used to play pharmacy
9:26
Speaker 5: when they.
9:26
Speaker 4: Were kids instead of play school.
9:28
Speaker 8: It was pretty.
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Speaker 5: Hubrious at the time. But none of them are following
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Speaker 5: in my footsteps.
9:34
Speaker 4: I do think too, if.
9:35
Speaker 6: You develop a relationship with your schools in your area,
9:40
Speaker 6: is very resourceful for you forgetting those high school students
9:44
Speaker 6: that are the high stem achievers that want to be exposed.
9:48
Speaker 6: Whether it's a co op program that you are part
9:51
Speaker 6: of we are part of one in our pharmacy, whether
9:53
Speaker 6: it's actually hiring someone that is going to be a
9:56
Speaker 6: after school worker in your pharmacy that is going to
9:59
Speaker 6: go through your now technician certification train neee designation.
10:04
Speaker 4: It gives them exposure and the schools really yearn for that.
10:07
Speaker 6: They want to put students into professional environments.
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Speaker 4: So I think one of the things that we can.
10:13
Speaker 6: Do as a pharmacy community is be cognizant of that
10:16
Speaker 6: and make those relationships inside your community with the schools.
10:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, shout out to everybody listening. Any pharmacist, any independent
10:24
Speaker 3: community pharmacists, hospitals, pharmacists, it doesn't matter. Reach out to
10:28
Speaker 3: your local high school and ask just ask the principal,
10:32
Speaker 3: ask one of the coordinators. I want to come in
10:34
Speaker 3: on a career day and tell you what it is
10:37
Speaker 3: to be because we have to advocate for ourselves. You know,
10:40
Speaker 3: pharmacy is not going to happen unless we make it happen.
10:44
Speaker 3: And that's why it's important to be here at the
10:45
Speaker 3: Pennsylvania Pharmacists Association's annual meeting. And Value has always been
10:51
Speaker 3: such an amazing supporter of the PPA. I know it's
10:54
Speaker 3: your home, you know, agency, just like it is home associations,
11:00
Speaker 3: But we really appreciate Value drug in the evolution the
11:04
Speaker 3: ninety plus years the hard work, the new warehouse, the
11:08
Speaker 3: new programs that you've come out with, but very much
11:11
Speaker 3: appreciate the time that you take and the investment that
11:14
Speaker 3: you put into our profession.
11:15
Speaker 4: So thank you, thank you. That's a lot.
11:17
Speaker 6: We appreciate you, Todd so much and the opportunity that
11:20
Speaker 6: you're giving the voice the pharmacists that often we're never heard.
11:23
Speaker 4: So thank you very much.
11:24
Speaker 3: Well, thank you. Hey, we'll be right back with more.
11:26
Speaker 3: PPA twenty twenty six.
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Speaker 8: This is Darren Mench with the Population Health Team at
11:32
Speaker 8: Jefferson Health and you're listening to the Pharmacy Podcast.
11:38
Speaker 4: Darren, welcome to the show. So good to see you,
11:41
Speaker 4: absolutely thanks for having us. You're very welcome.
11:43
Speaker 3: So talk to me about your role at Jefferson Health
11:46
Speaker 3: as a pharmacist.
11:48
Speaker 4: What do you do there?
11:49
Speaker 8: So, as as part of the Population Health Pharmacy Team,
11:53
Speaker 8: we work a lot around our quality metrics. We mainly
11:56
Speaker 8: focused on medication adherent statin prescribing in a one C control,
12:01
Speaker 8: so we're helping We're embedded in physician offices, mainly primary
12:05
Speaker 8: care offices, and we're working to help our patients gain
12:09
Speaker 8: access to medications. We're also working with the providers under
12:13
Speaker 8: a collaborative practice agreement to make adjustments to medications, do
12:18
Speaker 8: a lot of continuous glucose monitoring as well, and mainly
12:23
Speaker 8: gaining access for patients to their medications.
12:26
Speaker 4: So what do you.
12:26
Speaker 3: Feel has changed in our profession and are.
12:33
Speaker 4: There more opportunities for pharmacists.
12:35
Speaker 3: Today or are there less opportunities for pharmacists today?
12:38
Speaker 8: I certainly think especially with the primary care provider shortage
12:42
Speaker 8: within physicians, you know, it's opening up a lot of
12:45
Speaker 8: avenues for pharmacists to kind of fill in some of
12:47
Speaker 8: those roles work within the value based care realm, which
12:51
Speaker 8: is where our.
12:52
Speaker 4: Team is situated in.
12:54
Speaker 8: And so we've done a lot of work around our
12:56
Speaker 8: quality metrics and proving our value, developing that rapport and
13:01
Speaker 8: those relationships with our with our physicians. Our teams expanded
13:04
Speaker 8: over the last couple of years.
13:06
Speaker 4: So it's great to.
13:06
Speaker 8: See that kind of that sort of hockey hockey stick
13:09
Speaker 8: growth for our team.
13:12
Speaker 3: All right, And then are you with the use of
13:17
Speaker 3: all this with the scraping of all this data and
13:21
Speaker 3: all the information that you're collecting, how is artificial intelligence
13:26
Speaker 3: impacting reporting, projections, predictive modeling?
13:32
Speaker 4: Like, talk to me about that SIGNI.
13:33
Speaker 8: Yeah, we definitely have been working with a lot of
13:36
Speaker 8: vendors UH and also with our internal team within our
13:40
Speaker 8: e m r H in order to to expand and
13:44
Speaker 8: make the data more accurate. So we've done a lot
13:46
Speaker 8: of work there, and then we also work with our
13:50
Speaker 8: internal IT team to kind of amplify make the make
13:54
Speaker 8: the system work better, faster and quicker for the doctors.
14:00
Speaker 8: So we've done a lot of work around real time
14:01
Speaker 8: pharmacy benefit prescription benefit, so that is when the provider
14:06
Speaker 8: is ordering a medication, they actually get a notice of hey,
14:10
Speaker 8: there might be a cheaper alternative, rather than all the
14:12
Speaker 8: back and forth between the pharmacy and the physician office.
14:16
Speaker 8: So we've implemented some new vendors in that space. And
14:19
Speaker 8: then also we've done a lot of work around refill protocols,
14:23
Speaker 8: so there's you know, in baskets for these providers are
14:26
Speaker 8: growing and growing and growing with all the messages from
14:28
Speaker 8: the portal for the patients refills and such, so we
14:33
Speaker 8: streamlined all of that so it's a very quick and
14:35
Speaker 8: easy process for the physicians. So I worked with our
14:38
Speaker 8: Associate Chief Medical Information Officer, doctor Brian O'Connell to work
14:43
Speaker 8: through all those refill protocols for Jefferson, and it's been
14:46
Speaker 8: a really cool process to be a part of and
14:48
Speaker 8: kind of see, you know, not just impacting the one
14:51
Speaker 8: patient in front of you, kind of see that throughout
14:52
Speaker 8: the entire enterprise. Is a really cool experience.
14:56
Speaker 3: Has organizations like Health and Human Services Sylvania State have
15:01
Speaker 3: they ever reached out to your hospital system and said
15:04
Speaker 3: something like, hey, could you guys give us some data
15:06
Speaker 3: on XX?
15:07
Speaker 4: Just from a population health perspective.
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Speaker 8: There's not a ton of you know, kind of contact
15:13
Speaker 8: with HHUS in that regard. With our team specifically, the
15:17
Speaker 8: majority of our work from a data standpoint comes from
15:20
Speaker 8: our payers, so we're working with them on a monthly basis.
15:24
Speaker 8: We also have access to most of the payers in
15:27
Speaker 8: our area direct access to.
15:29
Speaker 4: Pull our own reports as well.
15:31
Speaker 8: We're working towards ways to work with our EMR to
15:34
Speaker 8: automate that so we don't have to worry about going
15:37
Speaker 8: in manually pulling it just kind of on an automatic
15:40
Speaker 8: cadence comes through. But we haven't done a ton of
15:43
Speaker 8: reporting right now. We're in the process of getting credentialed
15:47
Speaker 8: and privilege within our health system, so that's.
15:50
Speaker 4: Kind of the next step for us as well. Darren.
15:53
Speaker 3: I've been waiting to talk to you very much. Appreciate
15:56
Speaker 3: you making this time for me at the Pennsylvania Pharmacists
15:59
Speaker 3: Associated and really appreciate you being part of the chef.
16:02
Speaker 4: Yeah. Thanks rov PPA twenty twenty six.
16:10
Speaker 3: One of the most exciting parts of coming to conferences
16:13
Speaker 3: is talking with the future of pharmacy, and that is
16:17
Speaker 3: Hailey Monroe. She is with Duquane University School of Pharmacy. Haley,
16:22
Speaker 3: welcome to the show.
16:23
Speaker 7: Hi, thank you.
16:24
Speaker 4: All right, so.
16:25
Speaker 3: Talk to us about You're a P two, P three,
16:29
Speaker 3: I'm a P four before all right, serious and stuff.
16:33
Speaker 4: The rotations have started. So what field? What sector of
16:37
Speaker 4: pharmacy are you really interested in? Right now?
16:39
Speaker 7: I'm pursuing hospital pharmacy, so I'm currently in the process
16:42
Speaker 7: of interviewing for residency programs.
16:44
Speaker 4: Okay with within a hospital.
16:46
Speaker 3: Is there any part of that that you're like, this
16:50
Speaker 3: is what I'd really like to do, for example, pediatrics
16:54
Speaker 3: or emergency medicine or something, or is there a facet
16:58
Speaker 3: of health system that you're interested in?
17:00
Speaker 7: Yeah, I really love emergency I've found so far through
17:02
Speaker 7: my rotations.
17:04
Speaker 3: And then talk to me about your vision of what
17:06
Speaker 3: you're hearing.
17:07
Speaker 4: From other p fours.
17:09
Speaker 3: What's the profession look like today then, Because I mean
17:12
Speaker 3: I entered twenty two years ago.
17:15
Speaker 4: I feel old.
17:15
Speaker 3: But what's the what's the consensus out there about our
17:19
Speaker 3: new pharmacist coming out of pharmacy school.
17:21
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think the most exciting thing for us is
17:23
Speaker 7: really just the independence that pharmacists can have now, really
17:26
Speaker 7: just being your own practitioner, advocating for your patients, advocating
17:30
Speaker 7: for their safety, what medications you would want. And I
17:33
Speaker 7: think knowing that providers are a lot more accepting of
17:37
Speaker 7: pharmacy now is something that's really exciting for us.
17:41
Speaker 4: Now, what about the technology side of things?
17:43
Speaker 3: I don't know if they've ever talked to you about
17:44
Speaker 3: digital therapeutics or pharmacogenomics or you know, disease state research.
17:51
Speaker 3: Is there anyone in your in your class that is
17:55
Speaker 3: going and doing something there or is talking about something
17:58
Speaker 3: that's very untraditional.
18:00
Speaker 7: I think there's a few students in my class that
18:01
Speaker 7: are pursuing kind of the more research aspect of pharmacogenomics
18:05
Speaker 7: and really looking at how medications affect specific patients and
18:09
Speaker 7: being able to advocate for those patients.
18:11
Speaker 3: What has Decane University done in the school aspect to
18:16
Speaker 3: kind of sprinkle on things that are happening, you know,
18:19
Speaker 3: throughout the world in the pharmacy space, to really kind
18:22
Speaker 3: of peque interest of our young pharmacists.
18:25
Speaker 7: Yeah, so our P three year we actually have a
18:27
Speaker 7: class called Innovations that essentially is a semester long course
18:30
Speaker 7: that covers everything that's up and coming in pharmacy, which
18:33
Speaker 7: was a super good experience for us to have.
18:35
Speaker 3: Hailey excited to talk to you here at the PPA
18:38
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six.
18:39
Speaker 4: Thanks for being part of the show.
18:40
Speaker 7: Thank you.
18:43
Speaker 9: This is Miyamen, also known as the Superman Pharmacists here
18:46
Speaker 9: listening to the Pharmacy Podcast.
18:48
Speaker 3: Live Skip Back Pharmacy Here at the PPA twenty twenty six.
18:56
Speaker 3: Doctor Mac in the House, a Pharmacy fifty alumni. You
19:00
Speaker 3: are a force to be reckoned with a force of good,
19:04
Speaker 3: a force of giving. And when I think of you,
19:07
Speaker 3: when I see you on social media, that's what I
19:09
Speaker 3: think of, A think of giving. And you've taught me
19:11
Speaker 3: a lot about giving because I have a hard time myself,
19:15
Speaker 3: Doctor Mac, always putting out, and that's all you're doing
19:19
Speaker 3: for your community is putting out. You're putting out salt
19:22
Speaker 3: because the roads are bad. You're putting out vaccine because
19:25
Speaker 3: vaccines are needed. You're putting out advice. Doctor Macket's so
19:29
Speaker 3: good to see you, Todd.
19:30
Speaker 9: It's always a pleasure to be on this and it's
19:33
Speaker 9: always important that positive stories are being shared out there
19:36
Speaker 9: with this world, because oftentimes we turn on the television
19:40
Speaker 9: or listen to the radio and all you see is negativity.
19:42
Speaker 9: You see bombs, you see people hating each other, you
19:45
Speaker 9: see shootings, But it's barely here and there that you
19:49
Speaker 9: hear a positive story of someone helping somebody else out there.
19:53
Speaker 9: And I think it's time that we make this contagious
19:55
Speaker 9: and that it's not only skip Back doing this. There's
19:58
Speaker 9: so many pharmacy owners around the country doing this week
20:00
Speaker 9: to week, but their stories have to be told, and
20:03
Speaker 9: people like you are giving them an avenue to do that.
20:06
Speaker 9: So thank you so much for doing that.
20:07
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I look at your I've remembered you when you
20:13
Speaker 3: were just starting and your passion, your passions still there,
20:18
Speaker 3: and even though your business acumen has matured, the passion
20:23
Speaker 3: has never changed. And I think that our pharmacy owners
20:26
Speaker 3: who are frustrated right now, our hospital system pharmacists who
20:30
Speaker 3: are frustrated are specially pharmacists or compounding pharmacists that are
20:35
Speaker 3: frustrated whatever you're frustrated about, if you return to the
20:39
Speaker 3: innocence of being a pharmacist of the reason that you
20:43
Speaker 3: wanted to do this in the first place, and you
20:45
Speaker 3: revitalize and you relight that fire in your soul. That's
20:50
Speaker 3: why I always am gravitated towards you, doctor mac Is,
20:53
Speaker 3: because you have that fire that's coming out in you.
20:57
Speaker 9: I just remember my youth and specific graduating pharmacy school.
21:02
Speaker 9: That's probably the only time I've read that oath of
21:04
Speaker 9: a pharmacist. But within that Oath of a pharmacist, one
21:07
Speaker 9: of the main things that I remember is that we're
21:09
Speaker 9: here to take care of people. And that's the reason
21:12
Speaker 9: why I signed up to be a pharmacist. Ever since
21:14
Speaker 9: I was younger, I wanted to find a profession where
21:16
Speaker 9: I can truly go out and help somebody, even if
21:19
Speaker 9: I didn't know them, and went through pharmacy school, graduated,
21:23
Speaker 9: read that oath, and no matter what I did after
21:25
Speaker 9: that point, I wanted to combine the aspect of providing
21:28
Speaker 9: a human experience no matter what kind of environment you're in,
21:32
Speaker 9: because oftentimes you know you might be working for a pharmacy,
21:34
Speaker 9: it's very stressful. The phone calls are going off the hook,
21:37
Speaker 9: somebody pulling up to the drive through, and then you
21:40
Speaker 9: forget that there might be someone at the drive through
21:43
Speaker 9: that has cancer, and you by just slamming that window
21:47
Speaker 9: on them because you're frustrated because the amount of phone
21:50
Speaker 9: calls or some metrics that you might have to meet,
21:53
Speaker 9: you're just closing that door on someone who may only
21:55
Speaker 9: have a few days left to live. And if we
21:58
Speaker 9: start treating people with care and dignity and treating them
22:00
Speaker 9: as if they're our own family members, I think the
22:03
Speaker 9: way that we as pharmacists and pharmacist technicians can view
22:06
Speaker 9: our patients will change dramatically. Just imagine that that person
22:10
Speaker 9: that the drive through is not just a patient, but
22:12
Speaker 9: that's your mother, or that's your child, that's your husband
22:16
Speaker 9: or your wife. And the more we start thinking that,
22:20
Speaker 9: our attitudes will change because there's no way in hell
22:22
Speaker 9: that any of us will mistreat our own family members. Likewise,
22:26
Speaker 9: we'll start caring about that patient, will give them a
22:29
Speaker 9: minute more to speak to us about problems they have,
22:31
Speaker 9: and actually go the extra mile instead of just saying
22:34
Speaker 9: it's an aisle three go figure it out exactly.
22:38
Speaker 3: I always said, you know, I look at the big chains,
22:40
Speaker 3: and I say Walgreens has a special opportunity, which I
22:45
Speaker 3: was a whole nother podcast. I actually wrote a blog
22:47
Speaker 3: on it about teaming up with independence. But I even
22:50
Speaker 3: think of the bane of healthcare, which is the mechanism
22:56
Speaker 3: of the three big PBMs that aren't adhering to what
23:00
Speaker 3: is truly patient care. And I think of the goodness
23:03
Speaker 3: in CVS Health, for example, there's so many pharmacists and
23:07
Speaker 3: pharmacy technicians who believe in what they're doing, and how
23:11
Speaker 3: do you leverage that passion for loving people and caring
23:15
Speaker 3: for people, and how do you turn that into something monetary,
23:19
Speaker 3: something sustainable, something profitable. You never had to deviate from
23:25
Speaker 3: care to make money.
23:27
Speaker 4: Meaning I'm a.
23:28
Speaker 3: Capitalist, like I want capitalism to thrive. But capitalism and
23:32
Speaker 3: greed are two different things. Greed is a whole. It's
23:36
Speaker 3: a perversion of capitalism. And I think that there's an
23:40
Speaker 3: opportunity to keep growing as independents, as hospital system, as specialty,
23:45
Speaker 3: as compounders, whatever you are, to leverage what's coming for pharmacy.
23:50
Speaker 3: Pharmacies moving away from dispensing and starting to are being
23:55
Speaker 3: become more articulate to the pharmacist knowledge. And then how
24:00
Speaker 3: how does the pharmacist embed themselves in a community to
24:02
Speaker 3: make changes to.
24:03
Speaker 4: Public health in public health outcomes.
24:06
Speaker 3: Imagine doctor mac a pharmacist setting up shop somewhere that
24:11
Speaker 3: there's a pharmacy desert that has people in it that
24:15
Speaker 3: have to travel five, ten, twenty miles no public transportation
24:19
Speaker 3: to get to a place to get some kind of care.
24:22
Speaker 3: And now you set up there and you go to
24:24
Speaker 3: the government, you go to the state associations, you go
24:27
Speaker 3: to the state funding, and you say, listen, I want
24:30
Speaker 3: to care for the public.
24:31
Speaker 4: I just want to.
24:32
Speaker 3: And that's it. I want to care for the public.
24:34
Speaker 3: I'm a farm d or I'm a physician or whatever
24:37
Speaker 3: it is. Like, I think there's a new age of
24:39
Speaker 3: pharmacy care coming.
24:41
Speaker 9: You're absolutely right, and you kept on reattering the word care.
24:45
Speaker 9: I think no matter what direction that we had with pharmacy,
24:47
Speaker 9: as long as we keep that aspect of care in pharmacy,
24:52
Speaker 9: we're heading in the right direction. Eventually payers will see
24:56
Speaker 9: even if they don't directly see, someone's going to force
24:58
Speaker 9: them to see it.
24:59
Speaker 3: Yeah.
25:00
Speaker 4: To a reporter right before.
25:01
Speaker 9: This, he was asking about Medicaid reimbursements in Pennsylvania, and
25:06
Speaker 9: we talked about pharmacy deserts. I gave him a prime example.
25:11
Speaker 9: Two days ago, I was heading home. I'd live about
25:14
Speaker 9: two hours away from my pharmacy, and I had to
25:17
Speaker 9: make a delivery. Somebody asked, why are you making the
25:20
Speaker 9: delivery You own the pharmacy, and I'm like, because if
25:23
Speaker 9: I had to pay a company to make the delivery,
25:25
Speaker 9: I'd probably lose money. And then I gave him the
25:28
Speaker 9: example that this patient has six prescriptions and they were
25:32
Speaker 9: important medications diabetes, heart health and things that this patient
25:37
Speaker 9: absolutely needs. But they're homebound. They can't leave their house.
25:40
Speaker 9: So that's why I feel bad for the person, and
25:42
Speaker 9: I'm going to go drop off the medication to that
25:44
Speaker 9: patient's house. The other night, before I was heading out,
25:47
Speaker 9: I was like, let me just look at the gross
25:48
Speaker 9: profit column, not that that encouraged me to provide this
25:52
Speaker 9: person any better or worse service. And I saw that
25:55
Speaker 9: every single one of those six prescriptions was a gross
25:57
Speaker 9: profit of less than a dollar fifty three twenty six cents,
26:01
Speaker 9: and then I scratched my head, and then I kind
26:03
Speaker 9: of understood of why so many independent owners are very
26:07
Speaker 9: frustrated with what's happening. When you're gonna pay your staff,
26:13
Speaker 9: you know, increases with the wages every year, you're gonna
26:15
Speaker 9: electric bill, your rent increases, and the cost to fill
26:18
Speaker 9: up prescriptions twelve dollars and the gross profits fifty three cents.
26:22
Speaker 9: You're actually losing eleven dollars and forty seven cents on
26:24
Speaker 9: that prescription. Multiply that by six times twelve. That's how
26:29
Speaker 9: much you're losing to help this patient. And it's it's
26:33
Speaker 9: sad and unfortunate, but these are the stories that our
26:36
Speaker 9: legislators need to hear. And I've tried to do my
26:39
Speaker 9: best to make sure that this little story I want
26:42
Speaker 9: the news to report on it. They can use my name,
26:45
Speaker 9: they don't have to use my name. But a lot
26:48
Speaker 9: of owners and a lot of pharmacists are scared of
26:50
Speaker 9: what can happen to them if they open their mouths
26:54
Speaker 9: and share their stories or share their voices. I'm sure
26:57
Speaker 9: even with you, if someone had to open up, then
26:59
Speaker 9: they might work front another company. They may hold back
27:02
Speaker 9: from saying certain things. You might have to robatize voices,
27:05
Speaker 9: but we'll do whatever. I can bet that if you
27:08
Speaker 9: went into a place where you see some of these
27:11
Speaker 9: wrong things happening. The employees want to speak up, they're
27:15
Speaker 9: just scared to speak up because that company provides them
27:17
Speaker 9: with a paycheck and they have to take care of
27:19
Speaker 9: their family, so they just kind of zip their mouth
27:22
Speaker 9: and do what they have to do. But even for
27:25
Speaker 9: those individuals, I mean, there comes a point where you
27:28
Speaker 9: have to be concerned about yourself and the people you
27:30
Speaker 9: care for and just keep that aspect of care there
27:33
Speaker 9: and keep on knocking the door. Because I think we're
27:36
Speaker 9: a lot further now than we were five years ago,
27:38
Speaker 9: especially with the movement. It's because people are more vocal,
27:41
Speaker 9: people are recording things, people are sharing stories, and we
27:44
Speaker 9: need to keep that momentum moving.
27:47
Speaker 3: Tell me, why do you keep coming back to the
27:50
Speaker 3: Pennsylvania Pharmacists Association's annual event where your time is limited.
27:57
Speaker 3: You have a family, you have a business, National shows,
28:01
Speaker 3: there's people that would like you to come talk. You know,
28:03
Speaker 3: they probably pay you to come talk at some event.
28:06
Speaker 3: Why do you keep coming back to the PPA?
28:09
Speaker 9: You have to support the people that support you. While
28:12
Speaker 9: many people don't realize it. Vicky Elliott. A lot of
28:15
Speaker 9: the people that are here from the PPA staff, They
28:18
Speaker 9: work day and night. Sometimes we're texting them at eleven
28:21
Speaker 9: o'clock at night. That's a normal hour for us, but
28:24
Speaker 9: for them, they have to be back here at seven
28:26
Speaker 9: o'clock in the morning to set up or do other things.
28:29
Speaker 9: They're not fighting for PPA, they're fighting for us as pharmacists,
28:33
Speaker 9: the pharmacy technicians in our state. So they're giving their
28:37
Speaker 9: all just to support us, and at the end of
28:39
Speaker 9: the day, they're caring for Pennsylvanians. The least that we
28:42
Speaker 9: can do is show up for them, and conferences like
28:45
Speaker 9: this allow us to show up for our state because
28:49
Speaker 9: at the end of the day, you go to a
28:50
Speaker 9: national conference, yes there's national issues, but you have to
28:53
Speaker 9: figure out what's going on in your own backyard before
28:55
Speaker 9: you can worry about the world. So true, and yes
28:58
Speaker 9: there's federal legislators that we have to be in touch with,
29:02
Speaker 9: but there's so many here in Pennsylvania, literally right across
29:05
Speaker 9: the street, including the governor who hear our stories. So
29:09
Speaker 9: many of the things that have changed in Pennsylvania have
29:12
Speaker 9: happened because we've all come together as a group. Whether
29:15
Speaker 9: it's the wholesalers like Value Drug PPA PARD in Philadelphia.
29:21
Speaker 9: A lot of these organizations work behind the scenes with
29:24
Speaker 9: each other day and night. Every Thursday, that morning there's
29:26
Speaker 9: a call eight o'clock where a lot of these folks
29:28
Speaker 9: get together and talk about issues that people like myself
29:31
Speaker 9: might have, and we share them the issues. They figure
29:35
Speaker 9: it out, just like our patients tell us their issues
29:37
Speaker 9: and then they hope that we can figure it out. Likewise,
29:41
Speaker 9: we're hoping that Vicki and the team here is listening
29:44
Speaker 9: to our voices and that we're not hoping. We know
29:45
Speaker 9: they actually listen to us because things that we complain
29:48
Speaker 9: about or even voice are concerns about. They're taking it
29:51
Speaker 9: very seriously. One prime example is in the past season
29:57
Speaker 9: vaccines federally, especially the COVID vaccines, there was a lot
29:59
Speaker 9: of questions about and in Pennsylvania and actually throughout the country. We,
30:04
Speaker 9: as you know, providers, believe it's a personal choice. If
30:07
Speaker 9: you want to get a vaccine, great, If you don't
30:08
Speaker 9: want to get one, that's fine. Everyone's a grown up adult.
30:11
Speaker 9: You can make your own choices. But people should have
30:14
Speaker 9: a choice. So we were fighting for that because in
30:16
Speaker 9: Pennsylvania and across the country, unless your state had provisions
30:20
Speaker 9: that allowed you as a pharmacy to vaccinate. We weren't
30:23
Speaker 9: going to be allowed to vaccinate people for the COVID vaccine,
30:26
Speaker 9: so at that time we reached out to the organizations
30:29
Speaker 9: like PPA, and Vicki and the team were right there
30:33
Speaker 9: with us. Reached out to the Governor's office and initially
30:36
Speaker 9: something that was supposed to be curbed on a meeting
30:38
Speaker 9: agenda item for a month afterwards was met and you know,
30:42
Speaker 9: within a week they approved it and they found a
30:44
Speaker 9: way for us to be able to service our patients.
30:47
Speaker 9: And this happens because of organizations like this who are
30:50
Speaker 9: there listening to us. And honestly, sometimes you just have
30:54
Speaker 9: to show face. You learn one or two things, and
30:57
Speaker 9: you have your money's worth the registration fee, your travel time,
31:01
Speaker 9: your time away from your family. And this is one
31:02
Speaker 9: of those conferences where I think it's super important that happens.
31:06
Speaker 3: Doctor Mac, thank you so much for being a guest
31:08
Speaker 3: here on the PPA twenty twenty six. It's so not
31:12
Speaker 3: only enlightening for me, but it charges me up when
31:15
Speaker 3: I talk to you, So thank you for being here.
31:17
Speaker 9: Thank you brother, Always a pleasure.
31:24
Speaker 1: The Pennsylvania Pharmacist Care Network or PPCN, is transforming how
31:28
Speaker 1: community pharmacy contributes to patient care across the Commonwealth. PPCN
31:33
Speaker 1: is a network of more than two hundred pharmacies committed
31:36
Speaker 1: to delivering high quality, patient centered care that goes far
31:39
Speaker 1: beyond traditional dispensing.
31:40
Speaker 10: Through PPCN, pharmacists collaborate with physicians, health plans and healthcare
31:44
Speaker 10: providers to improve medication use, enhance outcomes, and lower the
31:48
Speaker 10: total cost of care they're pharmacists deliver services like comprehensive
31:52
Speaker 10: medication management, immunizations, medication synchronization, product disease support, and other
31:58
Speaker 10: enhanced clinical services. Is designed to help patients stay healthier
32:02
Speaker 10: and avoid unnecessary hospitalizations.
32:04
Speaker 1: What makes PPCN unique is it's focused on measurable outcomes.
32:08
Speaker 1: Member pharmacies participate in a clinically integrated network that emphasizes accountability,
32:13
Speaker 1: performance and real patient results. By working directly with payers
32:17
Speaker 1: and healthcare partners, PPCN creates sustainable reimbursement opportunities for pharmacies
32:22
Speaker 1: providing these critical care services.
32:24
Speaker 10: For pharmacists, PPCN offers the opportunity to expand beyond dispensing
32:29
Speaker 10: and become a vital part of the healthcare team.
32:31
Speaker 4: For patients.
32:32
Speaker 10: It means better medication management, improved health outcomes, and more
32:35
Speaker 10: personalized care right in their neighborhood pharmacy.
32:38
Speaker 1: Learn more about how PPCN is advancing pharmacy practice and
32:42
Speaker 1: improving patient care across Pennsylvania at Papharmacists Network dot com.
32:47
Speaker 1: That's PA Pharmacistsnetwork dot com jays.
32:57
Speaker 4: It had to be years ago.
32:59
Speaker 3: It was back in my HD Smith days when Rob Merriweather,
33:05
Speaker 3: for goodness sakes, introduced me to Todd Laser and I've
33:10
Speaker 3: been connected to you Todd through LinkedIn since twenty thirteen.
33:13
Speaker 4: For goodness sakes, I'm starting to.
33:14
Speaker 11: Feel well twelve years ago, Rob Merriweather, Hello, Rob, remember that?
33:19
Speaker 4: Yes, but you you've been a veteran of the.
33:24
Speaker 3: Pharmacy space for quite some time. You've lived it, you've
33:28
Speaker 3: breathed that, You've seen things changing. Value Drug Company is
33:33
Speaker 3: really a success story because.
33:35
Speaker 4: What ninety years old, ninety years and a ninety years old,
33:38
Speaker 4: that's crazy.
33:39
Speaker 3: But to be able to still stay in business and
33:41
Speaker 3: be able to pivot, implement technology, implement services that are
33:47
Speaker 3: going to hold a high performing independent community pharmacy in
33:52
Speaker 3: a competitive state.
33:53
Speaker 4: Talk to me about the overall success.
33:56
Speaker 3: In the longevity of being in this business and how
34:00
Speaker 3: values has value has sustained Actually thrived.
34:04
Speaker 11: Yeah, I think for us we have to change just
34:08
Speaker 11: like the pharmacies have to change.
34:10
Speaker 4: You know, we build a new.
34:11
Speaker 11: Warehouse several years ago, so for automation, we had to
34:15
Speaker 11: stay up to the times, to stay up to what
34:19
Speaker 11: our pharmacies are doing or their demands. And so I
34:21
Speaker 11: think the how we've been successful is the partnership we
34:26
Speaker 11: have with our pharmacies. It's a very intimate relationship we
34:29
Speaker 11: have with them to understand their business, their needs, and
34:33
Speaker 11: I think it's the passion of the Value Drug Team
34:35
Speaker 11: that just infiltrates from our entire organization that we have
34:40
Speaker 11: the passion. We have employees that's been here twenty thirty
34:44
Speaker 11: forty years and everything we do, we know we have
34:47
Speaker 11: to provide the best, top top class services and support
34:53
Speaker 11: for them to survive. Pharmacies are struggling with reimbursements, their
34:57
Speaker 11: cash flow, and you know, we're doing everything we can
35:01
Speaker 11: with them to partner with them to understand their business,
35:04
Speaker 11: their needs, and how we can help them thrive and
35:08
Speaker 11: succeed in these challenging times.
35:10
Speaker 3: When I started seeing certain new PBM models coming to
35:14
Speaker 3: the market, the key word that was being thrown around
35:18
Speaker 3: seven to ten years ago was the word transparency. How
35:22
Speaker 3: you drug I've heard from your I've heard from your
35:25
Speaker 3: Ballbuster customers out there. Shout out to Sean narrow and
35:29
Speaker 3: out of Pittsburgh, but he says about transparency and about
35:33
Speaker 3: feeling like he's dealing with a partner and not necessarily
35:37
Speaker 3: just a wholesaler.
35:38
Speaker 4: Is where's that philosophy come from?
35:41
Speaker 11: Well, it all starts that we are co op and
35:44
Speaker 11: I think the transparency everything we do is for our
35:47
Speaker 11: members and the transparency we are beyond transparent with our customers.
35:54
Speaker 11: We have to be because at the end of the day,
35:57
Speaker 11: if our members don't survive, we don't survive. So the
36:01
Speaker 11: transparency is key with key to us and to understand,
36:05
Speaker 11: to be truthful where we're at, how we can help
36:08
Speaker 11: and how we can support them. But the key is
36:10
Speaker 11: understanding and really partnering with them to understand their business
36:15
Speaker 11: needs because every pharmacy is different.
36:17
Speaker 4: There's different models, different.
36:19
Speaker 11: Patient mix, so it's key to understand what and how
36:23
Speaker 11: do they go to market, how best that we can
36:25
Speaker 11: service them.
36:27
Speaker 3: I remember it was it was regional back in the day,
36:30
Speaker 3: but how many states now are you as value covering
36:34
Speaker 3: with like active clients throughout the nation.
36:38
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean we right now, if you want to
36:41
Speaker 11: say Next Day Courier, it's about twelve states, and we're
36:44
Speaker 11: looking to grow further. We obviously ship fed xups nationwide
36:50
Speaker 11: to different states down to Florida, et cetera. But Next
36:53
Speaker 11: Day Courier as a full line wholesaler, it's roughly about
36:57
Speaker 11: twelve states.
36:58
Speaker 3: I think there's such an advantage to having a partnership
37:01
Speaker 3: with a wholesaler that has that direct communication with their
37:07
Speaker 3: clients and the daily communication and the team. I've loved
37:12
Speaker 3: working with you guys, you know, shout out to Rick,
37:15
Speaker 3: shout out to John, to James. He was on our
37:19
Speaker 3: Pharmacy fifty Awards program. It was so much fun to
37:21
Speaker 3: have him on. Your support value drug support of our
37:26
Speaker 3: publication has been very important, and that's why we're here
37:29
Speaker 3: at the PPA twenty twenty six.
37:30
Speaker 4: So Todd, thanks so much for your support and being here.
37:34
Speaker 4: Thank you.
37:34
Speaker 11: I appreciate it.
37:35
Speaker 4: Thanks for your time.
37:38
Speaker 12: Hey, this is Johnson Adley from DGM Labs and you're
37:41
Speaker 12: listening to the Pharmacy Podcast.
37:46
Speaker 3: Jonathan Adley here at the Pennsylvania Pharmacists Association twenty twenty
37:50
Speaker 3: six meeting the PPA.
37:52
Speaker 4: Jonathan was great to run into you.
37:53
Speaker 12: Here same here. Thought it was super exciting seeing you.
37:56
Speaker 4: Hey, let's jump right in. We're gonna cut right to
38:00
Speaker 4: the mustard.
38:00
Speaker 12: I like it.
38:02
Speaker 4: Artificial intelligence.
38:04
Speaker 3: Let's talk about like the top three things that a
38:07
Speaker 3: pharmacy owner really needs to pay attention to the opportunities
38:09
Speaker 3: that are before them and leveraging such technology they didn't
38:12
Speaker 3: have two years, five years, ten years ago.
38:16
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean, look, opportunities really comes in two buckets. There,
38:20
Speaker 12: use AI to save money or you use AI to
38:22
Speaker 12: make money? Okay, so how can how can you use
38:24
Speaker 12: AI to save money? There is the data entry stuff
38:27
Speaker 12: that we're doing, which is essentially you have the AI
38:31
Speaker 12: inter prescriptions for you. You can also do the same
38:34
Speaker 12: with sticks messages, his voice AI. That's that's an easy
38:37
Speaker 12: bucket and I think it's very obvious. The second thing,
38:40
Speaker 12: you can use AI for a lot of the marketing
38:43
Speaker 12: that you do, as.
38:44
Speaker 13: Well as a lot of the scales for independent BOMs.
38:46
Speaker 14: Every parma inventory is one.
38:48
Speaker 13: Of the biggest to spend some material money the best
38:51
Speaker 13: checking multiple suppliers, AI hear spending value to manage five
38:56
Speaker 13: hours market simplifies the products.
38:59
Speaker 7: It is an make your mind.
39:01
Speaker 12: You can say.
39:01
Speaker 1: Place where can compare prices from where they've trusted interesting stuff.
39:06
Speaker 4: The medications to using from one platform more purchasing.
39:10
Speaker 12: The control and find.
39:14
Speaker 4: Where the pharmacy can have an additional racks dot I.
39:17
Speaker 12: For example, someone is an insulin point, they're not a
39:20
Speaker 12: batics applies. Hey, I can black that the chatter the doctor.
39:25
Speaker 12: Now you can upsell paboutic supply. It's something that division
39:29
Speaker 12: need that only makes your money. It's clinical value as well,
39:32
Speaker 12: or you know, over the count supplement. If there's a
39:35
Speaker 12: medication with the side effect, let's say someone has a UDI,
39:38
Speaker 12: you can always upsell them like a cranberry supplement. So
39:41
Speaker 12: there is some people losing AI in this way and
39:44
Speaker 12: it can add you know, really good value to the
39:47
Speaker 12: to the pharmacy.
39:48
Speaker 3: All right, So when it comes to Pennsylvania, are there
39:52
Speaker 3: groups of pharmacists or pharmacies or health systems that you've
39:56
Speaker 3: been working with that may be attending the PPA twenty
39:59
Speaker 3: twenty six.
40:00
Speaker 12: Yeah, So I would say, I know, thought we was
40:03
Speaker 12: just talking about you being in Pittsburg, and I'm thinking
40:06
Speaker 12: of all of our customers in Pittsburgh. So we have
40:10
Speaker 12: you know, Walbrog Family pharmacies that yeah, one of our
40:13
Speaker 12: probably second customer ever, servid customer ever, I should say.
40:17
Speaker 12: We have Zeal Specialty Pharmacy also in Pittsburg.
40:20
Speaker 4: Jonathan Aubert, Jack Jonathan Argerchack.
40:23
Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's been using us. Has been very
40:25
Speaker 12: like you know, very very much on the frontier of AI,
40:30
Speaker 12: very very innovative guy. Same for Britain for Mobile Family Pharmacies.
40:34
Speaker 12: We have custom Care Pharmacies with Adam Razinski. Again very
40:40
Speaker 12: innovative guy, doing great things in his pharmacy. Over in
40:43
Speaker 12: an affiliate area, we have the Art of Medicine with Jack.
40:48
Speaker 12: So yeah, I mean this is literally this is all
40:51
Speaker 12: the groups where I personally was involved in them, and
40:56
Speaker 12: today we have one hundred and seventy five. So I'm
40:57
Speaker 12: sure I forgot. It's a few there for your farmacises
41:01
Speaker 12: here and there.
41:01
Speaker 3: So Jonathan, we always enjoy having you on the programs.
41:04
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for being on Twerks.
41:07
Speaker 3: The last minute, we have a special Twerks coming up
41:09
Speaker 3: with you, and we're gonna probably bring on a client
41:12
Speaker 3: with you in order to kind of dial in it
41:14
Speaker 3: into what it means from their perspective to de leverage AI.
41:18
Speaker 12: Yeah, I'm super excited about that. It's always nice to
41:21
Speaker 12: hear people talk about AI in a practical, non highway
41:25
Speaker 12: of how to actually improve in your business.
41:27
Speaker 4: So thank you so much, Thank you so much.
41:30
Speaker 12: Thanks Doc.
41:36
Speaker 3: Jennifer Erso here at the PPA twenty twenty six.
41:39
Speaker 4: It's so good to see you, nanics to see you too.
41:41
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me. John, we've been emailing.
41:44
Speaker 3: You told me that there's another Jennifer Erso, so I
41:47
Speaker 3: was like, the name Erso kept coming up coming up
41:50
Speaker 3: was confusing me.
41:51
Speaker 4: Someone asking about her here today. I've never had it
41:53
Speaker 4: all for you to meet her. I hope to do
41:54
Speaker 4: that someday. We've got to get a picture with you guys.
41:57
Speaker 4: All right, let's talk about the.
41:59
Speaker 3: Role of the pharmacist the impact on patient care. But
42:04
Speaker 3: I want to kind of put the technology twist on it.
42:07
Speaker 3: You've been in pharmacy long enough to remember probably some
42:10
Speaker 3: of the now outdated systems.
42:12
Speaker 4: That we're out there.
42:13
Speaker 3: What are you excited about when it comes to pharmacy
42:15
Speaker 3: and technology.
42:16
Speaker 14: I think there's a lot that we can do to
42:18
Speaker 14: automate a lot of very manual tasks.
42:21
Speaker 4: We know that we do so much work.
42:23
Speaker 14: I mean, I've lived a large portion of my career
42:25
Speaker 14: in spreadsheets, mining data. There's so many tools and opportunities
42:32
Speaker 14: to make things automated, to make it easier, make the
42:34
Speaker 14: pharmacist more able to provide and deliver patient care in
42:37
Speaker 14: a very specific way that eliminates that manual nature of
42:41
Speaker 14: again data mining and sort of that process that's again
42:45
Speaker 14: very time consuming.
42:47
Speaker 3: But then also when you're a pharmacist, there's a way
42:50
Speaker 3: that you see specific clinical data the way that other
42:53
Speaker 3: people won't, but being able to hone in on things,
42:56
Speaker 3: especially if it's trending with where a patient was two
43:00
Speaker 3: years ago on a maintenance med and where they are
43:02
Speaker 3: today and what the outcome is there in lies and
43:06
Speaker 3: importance of using data as a pharmacist, I.
43:08
Speaker 14: Agree, and I don't think that any technology or agentic
43:12
Speaker 14: AI or anything like that can actually replace the clinical
43:14
Speaker 14: decision making. I just think we need to sort of
43:17
Speaker 14: lean into it to be able to use it and
43:19
Speaker 14: make it make us more efficient so that we can
43:22
Speaker 14: do more with the information that we have. I think
43:24
Speaker 14: things like key metrics, outliers, all the things that again
43:28
Speaker 14: we've done so manually for so many years.
43:30
Speaker 3: So I was talking to a young pharmacist on this
43:34
Speaker 3: week in Pharmacy several months ago, and I always when
43:39
Speaker 3: I talked to my kids about ranking things, I'll say
43:42
Speaker 3: something like on a scale from one to ten. So
43:44
Speaker 3: my parents my kids constantly say, oh, here comes Dad
43:48
Speaker 3: with his scale from one to ten. But I said
43:50
Speaker 3: to this young pharmacist, I'm like, on a scale from
43:54
Speaker 3: one to ten. From the use of AI, I said,
43:57
Speaker 3: I think I'm about a five out of ten and
44:00
Speaker 3: using it. But then after I talked to him, I
44:03
Speaker 3: realized I was like, only like a two or a
44:05
Speaker 3: three because of how vast and how fast fast and fast,
44:10
Speaker 3: how it's ais impacting everything. So I'm a great user
44:14
Speaker 3: of chat GPT to help me, you know how embarrassing
44:18
Speaker 3: to say this. I started using it as a spell
44:20
Speaker 3: checker originally and like being able to like structure my
44:25
Speaker 3: emails or my reports that I'm doing. But talk to
44:29
Speaker 3: me about AI and the pharmacist.
44:31
Speaker 4: I think it's a blue ocean. Yeah, I really do.
44:34
Speaker 4: I'll tell you.
44:35
Speaker 14: I think it's interesting what you say too about using
44:37
Speaker 14: it for chat GPT.
44:38
Speaker 4: I think it's really very beneficial and start small.
44:41
Speaker 14: Do it for research on an organization, or research on
44:43
Speaker 14: a company, or trying to find some metrics that you're
44:47
Speaker 14: looking for for something, I think that it's important to
44:49
Speaker 14: be inclusive of the disclosure that you're using it, for sure,
44:53
Speaker 14: if you're using it for any kind of publication or presentation.
44:56
Speaker 14: But I think that there's a lot to be said
44:58
Speaker 14: for what that looks like. And I'm not a that
45:00
Speaker 14: engineer by any stretch, but I do think that there's
45:03
Speaker 14: really a big space for the development of tools that
45:07
Speaker 14: will help with all of those things.
45:08
Speaker 3: So the spreadsheet comment that you made, I can take metrics.
45:13
Speaker 4: So we've been doing this.
45:14
Speaker 3: For the first podcast came out in two thousand and nine,
45:17
Speaker 3: so it's been seventeen years we've been podcasting.
45:19
Speaker 4: About fires regulations. Hey, thank you.
45:21
Speaker 3: And I took all of my data from seventeen years
45:24
Speaker 3: and I gave it to chat GPT and I started
45:27
Speaker 3: asking it growth questions and it literally started mapping out
45:31
Speaker 3: you should be talking more about disease states or you
45:34
Speaker 3: should be talking more about because it found what trends
45:39
Speaker 3: of which of our podcast episodes were getting listened to
45:43
Speaker 3: more than others.
45:43
Speaker 4: I thought that was fascinating.
45:45
Speaker 14: So those key indicators and those sort of specific data
45:52
Speaker 14: points or elements that it pulls out, how.
45:53
Speaker 3: Long would it have taken you to do that, I
45:55
Speaker 3: wouldn't even have attempted.
45:56
Speaker 4: It would have taken way too long.
45:58
Speaker 14: And again I'm not suggesting that it's you know, you
46:00
Speaker 14: take your PHI and you put it in a judge
46:02
Speaker 14: chat DPT by any stretch. I just think that there's
46:05
Speaker 14: a lot of ways that we can utilize data, whether
46:07
Speaker 14: it's de identified or through secure platforms, because they exist
46:11
Speaker 14: as well to really get to the bottle of things
46:14
Speaker 14: faster that let us dig into specifically managing a problem.
46:19
Speaker 4: Jennifer.
46:20
Speaker 3: I was thinking also the role of the pharmacists personalized care.
46:25
Speaker 3: Is there any sector of pharmacy that you're most excited
46:29
Speaker 3: about as a pharmacist.
46:30
Speaker 4: Are you looking at specialty?
46:31
Speaker 3: You're looking at compounding and thinking, boy, something real dynamic.
46:34
Speaker 4: Is happening there.
46:35
Speaker 14: So my career has been in post acute care, so
46:38
Speaker 14: I looked at the skilled nursing facilities. Is this a
46:40
Speaker 14: living facilities that sort of post acute care environment, and
46:43
Speaker 14: I think that it's constantly changing. It challenges every aspect
46:48
Speaker 14: of the industry of pharmacy. If you're looking at that
46:51
Speaker 14: sort of umbrella has its own set of challenges. But
46:54
Speaker 14: this is a unique challenge to me because we have.
46:56
Speaker 14: You know, everyone talks about the silver's hunoomy and how
46:58
Speaker 14: many patients a into sixty five and older populations every day.
47:03
Speaker 14: I think that there's a need to assess how that
47:06
Speaker 14: looks and what that looks like in the look for
47:08
Speaker 14: postic CU care industry, primarily because I see the skilled
47:13
Speaker 14: nursing industry is getting more acmuity from hospitals, and I
47:15
Speaker 14: see this is a living having to adapt to as well.
47:18
Speaker 14: What we used to see in skilled nursing maybe insitce
47:20
Speaker 14: of living in the future, they're having to figure out
47:21
Speaker 14: ways to care for sacre patients in all of these
47:24
Speaker 14: aspects of that post care field, and I think that
47:28
Speaker 14: pharmacists are uniquely positioned to help with that.
47:31
Speaker 3: Jennifer, thank you so much for talking to me here
47:34
Speaker 3: at the PPA twenty twenty six.
47:36
Speaker 14: Thanks for reminding me my pleasure