Dr. Spence leads strategy and policy development for the pharmacy enterprise at Hackensack Meridian Health, having become the system’s chief pharmacy officer in February 2026. As prior network director of the acute care pharmacy division, he established a unified, networkwide pharmacy and therapeutics committee with a standard drug formulary, and then implemented a network drug diversion prevention program with an analytics platform. He leverages his pharmacy, legal and business degrees to enhance operations and ensure regulatory compliance, and has delivered more than $50 million in cost savings through program optimization, revenue cycle enhancements and improved formulary management. Dr. Spence also designed a 340B optimization strategy that improved program integrity while capturing new eligible savings. His 2025 accomplishments included rolling out a GLP-1 obesity center of excellence strategy with in-house pharmacies and co-developing an eKAM note summarizer tool for Epic to help clinicians meet CMS Part D measures. He previously held pharmacy leadership roles at Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health, Columbia, Md.-based MedStar Washington Hospital Center, Jacksonville, Fla.-based Ascension St. Vincent’s and Charleston (W.Va.) Area Medical Center.
