From automating refill workflows to launching mobile apps, health system pharmacies are turning to digital innovation to help enhance patient care and improve operational efficiency.
Below are responses from four pharmacy leaders who were asked: What is one success story of a digital innovation or initiative within your health system’s pharmacy that has had a positive impact?
Angelica Berni, PharmD. Director of Clinical Ambulatory Pharmacy Services and Specialty Pharmacy at Baptist Health South Florida (Coral Gables): A centralized, pharmacist-led medication refill management program was developed within our healthcare system to enhance the efficiency, consistency and quality of care across ambulatory clinics. Practice and pharmacy leadership recognized opportunities to streamline refill workflows, reduce administrative burden on clinical staff, and better support patient needs through a more standardized approach. By leveraging the expertise of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, the new model introduced evidence-based protocols and delegated refill responsibilities, allowing providers to focus more on direct patient care. The program was designed to improve turnaround time, optimize clinic operations and elevate both patient and provider satisfaction through a collaborative and innovative solution.
The implementation involved a phased approach beginning with cardiology clinics, mapping refill entry points, centralizing requests into the electronic medical record, and integrating a third-party software for refill recommendations based on clinical protocols. These protocols, developed collaboratively by pharmacy and physician leadership, ensured that refills adhered to visit and lab requirements, with provisions for short-term courtesy refills to avoid therapy gaps. As of 2025, 18 clinics and 140 providers in cardiology, primary care, and endocrinology were participating. The program consistently achieves 24- to 48-hour medication refill turnaround times, processes nearly 30,000 refills each month, closes care gaps, generates revenue through necessary visits and labs and improves medication safety. Pharmacists are operating at the top of their license, advancing pharmacy practice through collaboration, clinical oversight and continuous program improvement.
Robert Curtis. Pharmacy, Procurement and Logistics Program Administrator at Cleveland Clinic: The Cleveland Clinic Pharmacy, Procurement and Logistics team has harnessed Power Automate to deploy a virtual analyst, streamlining operations across multiple functions with immediate, actionable insights without the need for manual data curation. This virtual analyst monitors our inventory management system by comparing snapshots and promptly alerts our purchasing team of changes that could result in stockouts. It efficiently assigns open purchase orders to our receiving team, ensuring timely invoice payments. During shortages, it facilitates a virtual marketplace with automated communication between sites with excess inventory and those in need, requiring minimal human intervention. This automated system also manages task assignments and fosters closed-loop communication, significantly reducing processing steps. Additionally, it sends timely reminders for outstanding items, ensuring comprehensive follow-through while interacting with existing business applications.
Neil Gilchrist, PharmD. Vice President of Pharmacy Business Operations at Beth Israel Lahey Health (Cambridge, Mass.): There are many successes when digital innovation can help drive improved patient care and experience with pharmacy services. A recent success story from our team was the implementation of the MyBILH Pharmacy App that provides our patients with a modern, digital experience with our pharmacy programs. The adoption of the pharmacy app has been very successful within the first six months with patients completing over 25,000 refill transactions via the mobile app. This has allowed our patients to request refills when it is convenient for them while avoiding the need to manually request a refill through a phone system or waiting to speak to a pharmacy team member. Other benefits include the ability to view their entire medication profile, see prescription status and when complemented with a digital courier program, provide real-time updates on prescription delivery with tracking. Creating a seamless digital experience for patients is a key focus of our team as we strive to enhance the overall healthcare delivery to our patients.
Rita Shane, PharmD. Vice President and Chief Pharmacy Officer at Cedars-Sinai (Los Angeles): As part of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Program, our pharmacy staff provide transitions of care support, including taking medication histories, providing discharge medication reconciliation and post-discharge follow-up within 72 hours of patients leaving the hospital. Patients enrolled in the program are flagged in our electronic health records, which also serve as the basis for the medication histories and discharge medication reconciliation.
We evaluated 30-day readmissions for two intervention groups in comparison to a control group. One group of patients received all the pharmacy services described above. Another group only received post-discharge follow up within 72 hours. The control group of patients did not receive these services.
Over a 12-month period, we found a statistically significant reduction in 30-day admissions in the interventions groups compared to the control group. Patients were on an average of 16 medications across all groups demonstrating the complexity of this patient population who often have multiple chronic diseases and benefit from pharmacy transitions of care services.
