Rheumatology Clinical Pharmacy Specialist

Job Summary

In addition to the responsibilities listed below, this position is also responsible for helping to develop, maintain, and implement clinical practice standing orders, drug therapy management protocols and guidelines (e.g., collaborative protocols/practice agreements with providers); supporting development of trainings to continue drug education and staff development in-services for pharmacists, physicians, and other health care professionals, and students; independently providing direct patient care for medication initiation, medication selection, dosage titration, drug monitoring, patient engagement, medication adherence counseling, side effect management, medication discontinuation, and guides junior colleagues to do the same; maintaining relationships with providers to align drug conversion, drug tapering, and discontinuation initiatives and determine opportunities; independently adhering to initiative implementation of processes and workflow for assigned service areas; following formulary adherence guidelines, seeking input when needed; and independently implementing new services for a disease state or care grouping/specialty (e.g., MTM) and suggesting potential solutions for moderately complex services.

Essential Responsibilities

• Promotes learning in others by proactively providing and/or developing information, resources, advice, and expertise with coworkers and members; builds relationships with cross-functional/external stakeholders and customers. Listens to, seeks, and addresses performance feedback; proactively provides actionable feedback to others and to managers. Pursues self-development; creates and executes plans to capitalize on strengths and develop weaknesses; leads by influencing others through technical explanations and examples and provides options and recommendations. Adopts new responsibilities; adapts to and learns from change, challenges, and feedback; demonstrates flexibility in approaches to work; champions change and helps others adapt to new tasks and processes. Facilitates team collaboration to support a business outcome.
• Completes work assignments autonomously and supports business-specific projects by applying expertise in subject area and business knowledge to generate creative solutions; encourages team members to adapt to and follow all procedures and policies. Collaborates cross-functionally and/or externally to achieve effective business decisions; provides recommendations and solves complex problems; escalates high-priority issues or risks, as appropriate; monitors progress and results. Supports the development of work plans to meet business priorities and deadlines; identifies resources to accomplish priorities and deadlines. Identifies, speaks up, and capitalizes on improvement opportunities across teams; uses influence to guide others and engages stakeholders to achieve appropriate solutions.
• Supports drug education and training efforts by: supporting development of trainings to continue drug education and staff development in-services for pharmacists, physicians, and other health care professionals, and students.
• Provides pharmaceutical patient care and drug therapy by: sustaining and managing productive relationships with care providers and members; providing moderately complex case-specific drug information (e.g., drug therapy, adverse effects, compliance, appropriate use, and handling) to health care providers and members, independently; organizing, identifying issues, and/or beginning to recommend patient-specific drug therapy plans while monitoring progress of therapy through interviews, physical assessment, patient education and clinical laboratory monitoring, independently; collecting, analyzing, and presenting moderately complex therapeutic outcomes to health care providers to collaboratively identify possible drug plan improvements, independently; leading implementation, evaluating, and reporting utilization, as appropriate, of targeted medications and medication classes to evaluate impact of initiative work to assure safe, rational and cost-effective prescribing; developing, implementing and analyzing clinicians or department-level decisions, support, and feedback using tools, effectively engaging and driving support for the drug use management process; and facilitating moderately complex pharmaceutical care and optimal utilization of resources to and from acute and ambulatory patient-care settings.
• Leverages, maintains, and complies with all existing internal and external quality, safety, emergency, and accreditation policy and procedures by: adhering to all regulatory rules and regulations (e.g., Drug Enforcement Administration [DEA], State Board of Pharmacy, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act [HIPAA]) and relevant internal regional and national policies; independently ensuring patient safety in the preparation and provisioning of care (e.g., medications, procedures, infection prevention), including consistent use of two patient identifiers and procedural time outs; identifying potential future accidents and reporting safety hazards, accidents and incidents, and unsafe working conditions promptly; and collaborating with physicians, other medical professionals, and health plan personnel to resolve moderately complex issues and assure quality and process outcome measures.