Introduction

My story

Over fifteen years ago, in 2005 I was sitting in a crowded lecture hall at the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy trying to decide what clinical rotations I wanted to choose. I had not yet made up my mind about what area of pharmacy I wanted to practice. What I did know however, was that I wanted some amount of direct patient contact, and the ability to work with other healthcare providers in order to enhance the level of care our patients would receive.

Fast-forward to my 4th Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience (APPE) rotation at a community pharmacy in a small northeast Iowa town, one of four pharmacies owned by a local health system. These pharmacies were staffed and managed by a company owned by two pharmacist partners. The business model of these partners was built around staffing and managing pharmacies owned by somebody else. They also had a separate company, although intertwined, that provided pharmacy consulting services separate from the dispensing of a product.

One of these partners and company owners, Jim Miller, had invited me to participate in several business meetings during my rotation. These meetings ranged from contract negotiations with the health system that owned the pharmacies, to high-level discussions with an Iowa insurance company interested in partnering with the consulting business. This insurance company was looking for a solution to decrease costs in patients with chronic conditions. Evidently, some of these patients were costing the insurance company more than was expected, and as you can probably guess, they did not like that.

How I got to where I am today

By the end of that rotation, Jim had offered me a job both staffing the pharmacy in that small northeast Iowa town, and working for the consulting company by providing clinical pharmacy services. He had come to an agreement with the insurance company, and so our team of clinical pharmacists would be contacting patients with certain chronic conditions over the phone. The goals we were tasked with were to improve the clinical outcomes of these patients and to decrease costs for the insurance company. This was my first introduction to population health.

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Welcome to the Population Health Pharmacist. My goal is to share my experiences as a population health pharmacist with you using the team-based care model, the importance of including research to show the impact of your work, and how to improve quality metrics on a large scale. I hope you will join me on this ongoing journey so you too can learn more about this industry I have spent my entire life navigating.