Dr. Alvarez leads all of Carilion Clinic’s inpatient and outpatient pharmacy services, spanning hospital, retail, ambulatory, specialty and mail-order operations, and is the first leader at the organization to unify its outpatient and inpatient pharmacy departments. He implemented the region’s first specialty pharmacy operation and Southwestern Virginia’s only 24/7 retail pharmacy, deployed an EHR for pharmacy and developed Carilion’s first pharmacist-led tobacco cessation program. Dr. Alvarez led Carilion’s Covid-19 vaccine task force, overseeing distribution of the first vaccines to the system’s hospitals and the vaccination of tens of thousands of people across southwest Virginia. He has expanded ambulatory pharmacy services, established a systemwide diversion prevention program and built an accredited community pharmacy residency program, which he directs. He also added Omnicell dispensing cabinets across facilities, implemented anesthesia workstations in procedural areas and introduced the first automated prescription dispensing systems in the outpatient pharmacies. A practicing pharmacist who joined Carilion in 2006, Dr. Alvarez is president-elect of the Virginia Pharmacy Association and will serve as its president in 2027.
