Becker’s asked pharmacy executives from hospitals and health systems across the U.S. to share how their organizations are navigating today’s workforce challenges while planning for the needs of tomorrow.
The 15 executives featured in this article are all speaking at the Becker’s Healthcare Spring Chief Pharmacy Officer Summit, from April 15 – 16, 2026 at the Hyatt Regency Chicago.
To learn more about this event, click here.
If you would like to join as a speaker or a reviewer, contact Mariah Muhammad at mmuhammad@beckershealthcare.com or agendateam@beckershealthcare.com.
For more information on sponsorship opportunities or vendor access-only badges, contact Jessica Cole at jcole@beckershealthcare.com.
As part of an ongoing series, Becker’s is talking to healthcare leaders who will speak at our conference. The following are answers from our speakers at the event.
Question: How are you balancing short-term workforce pressures with long-term workforce transformation?
Joseph Pinto. Vice President of Pharmacy Operations at Mount Sinai Health System (New York City): At Mount Sinai Health System, we’re balancing immediate workforce pressures with long-term transformation by stabilizing today’s teams while building the pharmacy workforce of the future. In the short term, we’ve focused on pay equity, flexible staffing, and shared governance to strengthen engagement and retention. In parallel, we’re developing new roles in pharmacy technology, data science, and informatics, expanding leadership pipelines, and leveraging automation and AI to elevate practice. This dual approach ensures we meet current operational demands while positioning our workforce for sustained growth and innovation advancing Mount Sinai’s position as a national leader in pharmacy practice within a Learning Health System.
Thomas Carey, PharmD. Senior Director of Pharmacy Services at UW Northern Illinois (Rockford): Supporting our workforce is by far our number one priority right now. Acutely, we recognize one of the most impactful things we can do now is one-on-one check in’s with our staff – particularly our technician team. Assessing their ‘battery-life.’ This is a heavy lift for our managers but helps identify things within our control that we can do to support staff well-being. This has had a significant and quantifiable impact on turn-over ratio. Long-term, we’ve changed our recruitment efforts. Instead of hoping for applications from experienced technician staff, we created an annual apprenticeship program for rising high school seniors. This proactive approach is also a tremendous lift, but produces well-trained staff on a regular cadence. These strategies are ongoing while keeping focus on our long-term strategic vision of what staffing looks like in three to five years.
Stephanie Goldman, PharmD. Vice President of Pharmacy at Tower Health (West Reading, Pa.): Balancing short-term workforce pressures with long-term transformation requires a dual focus on immediate operational needs and strategic innovation.
In the short term, the healthcare industry continues to face significant challenges with recruitment and retention, especially since COVID-19. We’re working to optimize workflows, cross-train existing staff, and foster open communication and transparency to maintain engagement and productivity despite limited resources.
At the same time, we’re planning for the future by embracing evolving technologies, such as AI and automation, to augment our existing workforce. These tools can help increase capacity, reduce burnout, and enable our teams to focus on higher-value clinical work.
Within pharmacy specifically, I believe long-term workforce transformation also depends on advocacy and education. Many people are unaware of the diverse and meaningful career paths available to pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. By engaging with schools and the community, we can raise awareness, attract new talent, and strengthen the pipeline for future professionals.
Ultimately, the balance lies in stabilizing today’s workforce while building a more resilient, tech-enabled, and well-informed workforce for tomorrow.
Kuldip R. Patel, PharmD. Senior Associate Chief Pharmacy Officer of Duke University Health System (Durham, N.C.): The fundamental premise under which our organization operates is that our people are the single most important and valued asset. Guided by this principle, we are focused on creating standard work for each role (including leadership) that delivers the greatest value in quality of care, safety, and financial outcomes. In addition, regular touch points with the front-line teams directly in their practice settings, helps leaders gain firsthand knowledge of the day to day challenges the workforce faces. This presence and understanding leads to real-time adaptations that help address the short-term workforce challenges. Simultaneously, strategic planning that focuses on exploring new and innovative service enhancement tools and technologies helps us reimagine a future state that is more attractive for our people long-term. Consistent and disciplined management of resources and performance in alignment with value added tasks that drives overall expected outcomes helps us balance both the short-term challenges and long-term transformation of the workforce.
Onisis Stefas, PharmD, MBA. CEO of VIVO Health, Northwell Health (New Hyde Park, N.Y.): As our pharmacy operations experience rapid growth, we are actively investing in additional resources to support patient care and services today, while recognizing that technology and automation will play an increasingly significant role over time. Our approach is to supplement, not replace, the vital work of our pharmacy teams, allowing them to reach and meaningfully impact more patients as we elevate health outcomes in the communities we serve. By doing so, we’re positioning our organization for immediate expansion and enabling long-term, sustainable growth.
Pharmacists are among the most trusted professionals in healthcare, and their ability to create and maintain real relationships with patients is integral to our mission. We are increasingly positioning pharmacy staff as patient navigators, helping individuals manage medications, access care, and understand their treatment in a complex healthcare landscape. Technology is helping drive efficiencies that allow our professionals to spend more time interacting directly with patients, supporting not only their physical health but also their mental and emotional well-being. Equally important, we are investing in training programs, mentorship, and stretch assignments to support internal promotions, as we need more pharmacy team members to step into larger roles over time as we continue to grow. Maintaining the human element of empathy, compassion, and genuine connection remains central to our efforts as we advance health in our communities.
Yahya Ahmed, PharmD. Pharmacy Director Associate of UK HealthCare (Lexington, Ky.): This may be the biggest question on the pharmacy director’s mind today. The pharmacy workforce is facing multiple crosswinds. There are emerging technologies, promising to save FTEs, there are cuts in budget and spending, and there is a desire to increase pharmacy driven services without disturbing operational benchmarks.
The principles in balancing pressure with the transformation are, however, the same as they have always been. Prioritize needs, justify costs, and introduce change incrementally. When evaluating new services or initiatives, ensure their impact is both measurable and aligned with the broader goals of the enterprise. Programs that clearly generate revenue or demonstrate quantifiable value should be prioritized for early implementation. Those high impact services can be supported by staff in less productive, or less prioritized programs.
Ultimately, workforce transformation should be viewed as a gradual evolution rather than a disruptive overhaul. By making deliberate, data-driven decisions and communicating the “why” behind each change, leaders can maintain stability today while building the structure needed for tomorrow’s pharmacy practice.
Jonathan Meli, PharmD, MS. Director of Pharmacy at UVA Community Health (Charlottesville, Va.): The workforce challenges that exist within healthcare require a multi-faceted approach in order to effectively address the short-term pressures and long-term transformation. In the short-term, strategies must be thoughtfully developed such as adaptive scheduling (e.g., 8- versus 12-hour shifts) to safely sustain core operations and having the leadership commitment to regularly check-in with team members to monitor the impact of maintaining these alternative staffing models. Additionally, the organization should clearly outline specific thresholds for implementing critical staffing/incentive pay programs in order to pull this lever to address workforce pressures that will undoubtedly arise in the short-term. Shifting to long-term strategies, healthcare organizations must actively invest in robust leadership and clinical pathways to support retention of their current workforce. Engagement surveys can be an invaluable tool to understand meaningful trends across each department and develop tactics that will further support retention of multi-generational workforces that exists within the healthcare industry.
Bickkie Solomon, PharmD. Director of Pharmacy, and Director, Residency Program Director PGY-2 HSPAL at HCA Florida North Florida Hospital (Gainesville); Assistant Professor of Pharmacy at West Coast University (Irvine, Calif.): Having led large cross-functional teams and multiple sites across diverse healthcare systems, including inpatient, outpatient, specialty, durable medical equipment, home infusion, correctional healthcare, and the Indian Health Service, each with its own unique challenges and constraints, I’ve learned one immutable truth: no workforce strategy succeeds if you don’t first stabilize the humans right in front of you.
Balancing immediate workforce pressures with long-term transformation requires disciplined execution grounded in people-centered leadership. Across multiple executive turnaround engagements through my consulting business, Stat Rx LLC, I’ve seen time and again that stabilizing the current team is the non-negotiable starting point. I lead with transparency, accountability, humility, compassion, and fairness — because consistency builds trust and credibility, and trust is the strongest retention strategy any leader has. In practice, this means meeting with staff frequently — in team settings, private one-on-one conversations, and through an open-door approach — to surface concerns early, be open to constructive feedback regardless of your title, diffuse tensions proactively, and foster a sense of psychological safety. When employees feel empowered to speak up, validated in their experiences, and see real barriers addressed in a timely manner, they remain engaged, loyal, and high-performing.
To alleviate short-term pressures, I focus on targeted, high-impact interventions: cross-training staff to expand competencies, simplifying workflows, eliminating non-value-added tasks, and aligning work so clinicians operate at the top of their license. I am also intentional about investing in individuals who demonstrate passion, commitment, and a willingness to learn and grow. When someone is truly patient-first at heart, you can build skill around that mindset — strengthening both short-term workforce flexibility and medium-term leadership pipelines.
From a long-term standpoint, my approach is rooted in strategic workforce redesign. This includes developing leadership bench strength, expanding technician and pharmacist career pathways, optimizing advanced-practice roles, and redesigning responsibilities to reflect the technology-enabled future of care. AI plays a significant role in that roadmap. Thoughtful, well-vetted automation can help mitigate workforce shortages, but only when aligned with emerging regulatory expectations and introduced through a change-management strategy that includes top-down sponsorship, bottom-up trust, and cross-vertical alignment.
I also believe deeply in cultivating the next generation of leaders from an early age. As a part-time assistant professor of pharmacy at West Coast University, I integrate real-world experiences into courses on medication safety, regulatory compliance, sterile compounding management, Lean Six Sigma, and AI in healthcare. When students and early-career clinicians receive high-expectation coaching, mentorship, and exposure to practical skills, their confidence and capability accelerate dramatically.
Ultimately, whether in the short term or the long term, my philosophy remains consistent: build a culture of support, engagement, purpose, and self-inspired growth. Identify rising stars early, invest in them deliberately, and execute on a plan that empowers people to become the leaders they aspire to be. When individuals feel valued, see a clear path forward, and experience genuine care from their leaders, they evolve into the high-performing pharmacy professionals who form the backbone of a strong, resilient workforce.
If we expect extraordinary care for our patients, we must first create extraordinary support for our people. That is the unstoppable engine behind real workforce transformation.
Thaiane Hensch. System Director of Pharmacy Care Management at Essentia Health (Duluth, Minn.): It’s really an ongoing effort to balance immediate pressures with the work needed to prepare for the future. In the short term, we’ve added remote flexibility for roles where possible, such as positions in our Medication Access teams, which expands our pool of qualified candidates. We’ve also focused on streamlining workflows to help teams keep up with growing demand. At the same time, for long-term sustainability, we’re leveraging technology and automation to take repetitive tasks off their plates, freeing up more time for advanced clinical care as our practice continues to evolve.
Michael Paquette, PharmD. Senior Director of Pharmacy at Novant Health (Winston-Salem, N.C.): The nationwide shortage of pharmacy technicians continues to strain both hospital and retail pharmacies. To address immediate workforce challenges, Novant Health has focused on elevating the role of pharmacy technicians from a job to a sustainable career. A structured career ladder — linking advancement to skills, tenure, and national certification — has strengthened retention, driving a 73% reduction in turnover between May 2020 and June 2022. For long-term stability, Novant Health is expanding the talent pipeline through partnerships with recruitment firms and local community and technical colleges, while also investing in automation to reduce manual tasks and support top-of-license practice. The key takeaway: lasting workforce improvement requires meaningful investment in people — far beyond salary increases alone — which has proven essential for both recruitment and retention.
Michael Stepanovic, PharmD, MS. Assistant Professor at UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy (Chapel Hill, NC): In my role, balancing short-term workforce pressures with long-term workforce transformation requires meeting staff where they are while simultaneously building capacity for where we need to go. In pharmacy, we are addressing immediate gaps in the workforce through ‘just-in-time’ training modalities such as short courses, executive workshops, asynchronous learning, modular skill development, and flexible executive education to rapidly upskill pharmacy teams without removing them from practice and without hefty financial and time investments. This microlearning approach bridges the space between graduate education and daily operations, ensuring that workforce development continues even amid the staffing strain. This model fosters a long-term culture of continuous learning and adaptability, transforming workforce development from a reactive process into a strategic advantage. This helps teams to better manage shortages, redesign workflows, and implement new care models more effectively and builds the leadership-ready workforce we need to ensure the pharmacy enterprise is a strategic element to the larger health system enterprise.
DeJuan Branch, PharmD. Director of Pharmacy Services at Bon Secours – Richmond Community Hospital (Va.): I balance short-term pressures by stabilizing daily operations, ensuring safe staffing, improving workflow efficiency, and supporting the team through clear communication and cross-training.
At the same time, I am investing in long-term transformation through talent development, competency-based training, and technology that removes low-value work. This allows staff to work at the top of their license and creates a more sustainable, future-ready model.
By meeting today’s needs while building tomorrow’s workforce, we maintain stability without losing momentum on strategic growth.
Luis Alfonso, PharmD. Director of Pharmacy Services at Jackson North Medical Center, Jackson Health System (Miami): The first question we need to ask ourselves is, if we could, how would we redesign our hospital system’s pharmacy workforce? In the short-term, we need to focus on: triage coverage, utilizing per-diem resources to support core workflow with caps to avoid burnout, and rebalancing the core workflow to shift nonclinical work (cart fill, medication history, quality monitoring, auditing) from pharmacists to pharmacy technicians and pharmacy interns that way we can concentrate our clinical pharmacists to support the high complex medication management processes and stewardship programs. Cross-skilling the clinical pharmacists’ areas of expertise also contributes to creating a balanced short-term plan and reducing the pressure. Then, the transformation needs to take place to move into the dimension of added technology, supporting shared services through centralization and virtualization (telepharmacy), and incorporating AI, robots, pharmacy supply chain distribution hubs, and remote order verification and medication management monitoring programs.
In the long-term pipeline, retention plays a critical role. As we recently learned from the Indeed ‘Examining healthcare’s workforce sustainability crisis: An industry Report Pulse of Healthcare 2025’: as of August 2025, demand for healthcare workers was roughly 33% higher than pre-pandemic levels, 50% of healthcare workers report feeling exhausted in their current role, while only one in three are satisfied with their job and more concerning the survey concluded that among those in unsustainable roles, one in four are considering leaving the industry altogether, while one in five are weighing early retirement. How can we overcome that pressure? We need to keep our strong partnership with pharmacy schools for longitudinal IPPEs/ APPEs, to support residency programs in critical domains, explore the options of non-traditional residency programs to help our clinical pharmacist development path, tiered tech career ladders, certification pay, and flexible 12/10/8-hour mix, and explore options of in-house pharmacy technician training programs. I always use my own three-word philosophy: Reflect, Adapt, and Evolve.
Jeffrey Akers, PharmD. Vice President of Pharmacy at UC Health (Cincinnati): As a pharmacy executive leader, balancing short-term workforce demands with promoting our teams to long-term growth and advancement is one of our primary callings and challenges. At UC Health, I’ve endeavored to address staffing shortages through effective recruitment and retention tactics which have downstream impacts to increase capacity, heighten employee engagement, improve resiliency, and decrease burnout. Overall, pharmacy executives must continue to hold their leaders accountable but at the same time provide sufficient grace as they are simultaneously juggling their own short- and long-term expectations and goals. For the long-term, executive leaders must continue to demonstrate the value of pharmacy services through improved patient care outcomes and financial returns on the organization’s investment. Advancing new pharmacy care models, expanding interdisciplinary roles, strengthening employment pipelines, and leveraging technology will optimize clinical and financial outcomes to demonstrate the value of pharmacy services and provide the foundation for an enduring, sustainable, and expert workforce over the future.
Tim Affeldt, PharmD. Vice President of Specialty/Infusion Operations at Fairview Pharmacy Solutions (Minneapolis): Fairview Pharmacy Services is addressing short-term workforce pressures in a variety of ways: leveraging flexible staffing models, internal automation solutions and external automation vendors that make sense. At the same time, we’re investing in long-term transformation through initiatives like Fairview Pharmacy Solutions, which reimagines pharmacy operations as a growth engine. This includes modernizing workflows, expanding specialty and infusion services, and building scalable programs that enhance patient care and financial sustainability. By balancing immediate needs with future capabilities, we ensure resilience today while positioning our teams for success tomorrow.
