Rita Shane is vice president and chief pharmacy officer at Cedars-Sinai, one of the largest nonprofit academic medical centers in the United States, and professor of medicine at the institution.
She also serves as assistant dean of clinical pharmacy services at the University of California, San Francisco School of Pharmacy, a role she has held for more than two decades. Dr. Shane’s career at Cedars-Sinai spans more than 40 years, beginning as an intern pharmacist and progressing through clinical coordinator and assistant director roles before she became director of pharmacy in 1988 and chief pharmacy officer in 2015. Early in her tenure she developed pharmacist and technician career ladders as well as a clinical pharmacy intervention program designed to document the role of pharmacists in preventing adverse drug events.
Patient safety has remained a defining theme of her work, and she has been recognized for advancing safe medication practices, including the profession’s Harvey A.K. Whitney Award. She has extensive experience in clinical program development, multidisciplinary collaboration with medical staff and the financial and operational management of acute and ambulatory pharmacy practice.
A fellow of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists and the California Society of Health-System Pharmacists, Dr. Shane is widely regarded as a national leader in medication safety and the expansion of clinical pharmacist roles. Her contributions have helped shape contemporary models of pharmacist-led patient care.