Pharmacists today have unparalleled opportunities in management as well as in patient care. But along with the diverse array of opportunities come responsibilities and accountabilities more complex and greater than any time in the past. On a broad palette, people with pharmacy degrees are being sought after by a host of industries — from insurance to computers; from automation industries to government — that had not previously considered them. An increasing number of other channels for job recruitment are being directed at pharmacists as well. The result is a multitude of pharmacists who have elected to become specialists or who have moved up to the managerial level of pharmacy. Those individuals who choose to be specialists and managers generally need advanced postgraduate education in formal degree programs, and are actively seeking these degrees.
As in every field, pharmacy managers have to deal with and keep abreast of ever-changing issues, practice policies and new technologies (for instance, Biotechnology). In pharmacy, these include the understanding of every new drug (like Viagra, Cialis, Tramadol, Levitra, Edex and many other) that comes to market.
The number of these available new drugs has expanded exponentially, and the outcomes attendant on their use are unparalleled. People who might have died from an ailment in the past survive today because of these new therapeutic options. Another factor to be incorporated in the managing pharmacist’s purview is an increasingly aged population in this country, which has dramatically driven up the demand for more and better healthcare services. An increase in the number of patients needing medical services leads to a need for more people to serve them. On still another level, the expectations for positive therapeutic outcomes and financial consequences are on a higher plane now, so managers must be increasingly attentive to areas such as purchasing, distribution and assessment of outcomes.
Managers in insurance, for example, will be chiefly concerned with policy issues, which are concentrated on getting the greatest benefit for the lowest cost. Whereas a single hospital clinic might focus on how to treat the patient best and most cost effectively, managers must concern themselves with the cost of the newest drugs and how best to get them to the patients who need them but who may not be able to afford them.
Today’s managers must rethink the labor issue. There is clearly a scarcity of pharmacists, a lack which makes it critical to keep those pharmacists currently on staff happy and engaged in their work environments. Due to the shortage, there is a growing need everywhere for supervisors to re-engineer their work forces, developing systems that allow and encourage the best qualified people to do the most important work, that provide strong support staff, and have technology-oriented people doing the more routine operations.
Pharmacists cannot and should not work in isolation, and it’s up to the administration to set the path that blends them and the support staff into interdisciplinary-health teams.
Money remains a major concern and brings to the fore the problem of supplying a patient’s need for infinite resources with a company’s finite resources. There is no question that today’s pharmacy managers have to do considerably more with less. Every organization within medicine, it seems, is working with a shortage of both money and staff. This is a situation that usually can be surmounted with some creativity and discipline.
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