The Pennsylvania Pharmacist Association's Annual Conference Post Show | Part One

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Welcome to the Pharmacy Podcast Network.

Welcome to the Pennsylvania Pharmacist Association's annual conference post-show, presented by the

Pharmacy Podcast Network.

In this three-part series, we bring you exclusive interviews from the conference, held February

20th through the 22nd at the Hilton Harrisburg.

You'll hear real conversations with industry leaders, including Dr. Kyle McCormick, John

to James, the American Pharmacist Association CEO, Dr. Michael Hogue, and many more.

This series is proudly sponsored by Value Drug Company and the Pennsylvania Pharmacist

Care Network, PPCN.

As they celebrate their 10th anniversary of advancing pharmacist-led patient care across

the Commonwealth.

PPA, 2026, here.

Hey, I have two special guests, Margie, I'm going to start with you, introduce yourself

to our listeners.

Hi, Dad.

Margie Leiden, I'm a pharmacist for over four decades.

I currently work for Value Drug Company as the manager of long-term care strategy.

I've worked in community practice industry, long-term care, compounding, pretty much touched

almost all areas of pharmacy.

Absolutely, and Kathy, introduce yourself as well.

Kathy Grandiziel, I'm the owner of Dandel Pharmacy.

I'm a pharmacist.

We're a long-term care pharmacy closed door.

Also, I had owned a retail pharmacy that I had sold back in 2019 before going into

the long-term care space.

And I'm also on the Board of Directors, a Value Drug Company from the Vice-Chairwoman,

a Value Drug Company's Chairman of the Board, and I am also their political action committee

value-packed chairwoman.

All right, let's talk about the future of entrepreneurship in pharmacy.

Let's talk about independent community pharmacy, how it's shifting, how it's growing.

Margie, I want to start with you.

Long-term care pharmacy at home, I used to call that back in the day, combo shop.

But back in the day, we didn't really even get paid for half the stuff that some of

the changes that are coming down now with what truly is long-term care pharmacy at home.

So talk to us about that.

What's the opportunity out there for independent community pharmacies in that space?

Well, the opportunity is huge and I've seen it with pharmacies I work with over 120 independent

community pharmacies now that are value drug members in this space and nationally we're

seeing it grow.

And I think there's a lot of contributing factors.

Huge part of it is the aging population, the lack of nursing home beds, and especially

since COVID, people's desire to age in their homes rather than go into a facility.

The reimbursement is favorable so it's financially viable and I find it professionally rewarding

because we're doing so much more than just putting medications and compliance packaging

and delivering it.

We're getting involved with the healthcare team.

Kathy, how do we grow more pharmacy owners to backfill the collapse of thousands of

pharmacies across the nation where we have pockets of pharmacy deserts?

We desperately need more pharmacies to arise but we need them to be strong, we need them

to be thriving.

How do we do that?

Well, that's a very hard question and I think we're all trying to work together to get

through that.

One of the problems is I feel that starting at the pharmacy school level, there isn't

a lot of push to put people into the independent community role.

They want them to do residences which is wonderful but we need to also remember that there

are other aspects of pharmacy that we should be pushing in and introducing them to.

And so I think having more collaboration with the pharmacy schools would be huge in that

setting so that we could have more of the younger generation be exposed to entrepreneurship

and being able to be your own boss and make a difference in people's healthcare every

day in your independent community.

Having said that, I also think that it would be important that we give people in pharmacy

schools more exposure to business courses as not being an elective but actually being

part of the academic process for them so that they wouldn't be scared to take on being

a business owner.

I know at my age group and in the 50s you're always looking for what is your succession

plan and who is going to be the next generation for you and where are those pharmacists that

are coming up that are hungry to be in those stores.

We have a lot of opportunities for reimbursement now with the pharmacist being able to be providers

in Pennsylvania so that's going to open some more reimbursement pathways because again,

you can't be depending on traditional pharmacy.

You have to look for all the areas that you can make money in pharmacy and capitalize

on that.

Margie, how is value drug positioning itself to strengthen a new pharmacy owner or maybe

somebody that is an entrepreneur, a woman in pharmacy that wants to start her own business?

What are you guys doing to help support that?

Well, we teach a lot of the business information that pharmacy students don't get.

We actually have a success story now, a young woman who graduated last year.

She didn't start from a cold start, we call it, it wasn't a non-existent, she thought

the pharmacy where she had worked throughout her pharmacy school years and through the

support of value drug, she's coached her through everything from contracting to redesigning

or the pharmacy and the front end for maximizing profitability to working with the coaching

around opportunities that she may not have been aware of and really stick very close

and do a lot of hand holding where it's necessary and then launch them to be independent.

You don't want them to be overly dependent on us, but we want them to succeed and we

will stay by them while they're growing and learning.

One thing is they've been very strategic with our strategy team at value drug company to

have a buy cell program where if you are thinking that you are getting to the point of your

career where you're ready to make that move and to selling your store, you start having

those conversations, let's see if we can match someone to you, let's keep those stores

independent, let's keep our communities having access to those independent pharmacies that

are so integral to our communities.

All right, so I think of the 10th grader, 11th grader, 12th grader in school might be

strong in STEM, how do we, how do we get more of our community understand what pharmacists

bring.

I mean, they bring a whole different career opportunity today than what might have been

presented you 20 years ago, how do we call to bake that?

Well, I think first we have to dispel some of the, not myth, there is a reality that

pharmacies are a difficult space right now, but the opportunities especially in independent

pharmacies are phenomenal, we need to let people know it's not all the bad stuff that

we hear about, we're in this work hours and no work life balance, etc. and then capitalize

on the fact that these are their interests and I know for myself, I have been really fortunate

to have tremendous flexibility throughout my career and I have three children and as I

raise them, I morph between doing a couple of 14 hour shifts or a lot of four hour shifts

or working nights, just working in different spaces and I think let them know that you

can still have a family, hobbies, whatever else is important to you in life and still have

a really fulfilling career.

Margie, did you recruit any of them to become pharmacists?

Because I can't recruit any of my daughters to become pharmacists.

No, none of my kids, they actually used to play pharmacy when they were kids instead

of play school was pretty hubris at the time, but none of them are following in my footsteps.

I do think too if you develop a relationship with your schools in your area, it is very

resourceful for you for getting those high school students that are the high STEM achievers

that want to be exposed whether it's a co-op program that you are a part of, we are part

of one in our pharmacy, whether it's actually hiring someone that is going to be after

school worker in your pharmacy that is going to go through your now Technician Certification

Training Designation, it gives them exposure and the schools really yearn for that.

They want to put students into professional environments, so I think one of the things

that we can do as a pharmacy community is be cognizant of that and make those relationships

inside your community with the schools.

Yeah, shout out to everybody listening, any pharmacist, any independent community pharmacist,

hospital pharmacist doesn't matter, reach out to your local high school and ask, just ask

the principal, ask one of the coordinators, I want to come in on a career day and tell

you what it is to be, because we have to advocate for ourselves, pharmacy is not going to happen

unless we make it happen and that's why it's important to be here at the Pennsylvania

Pharmacist Association's annual meeting and value has always been such an amazing supporter

of the PPA, I know it's your home, you know, agency just like it is mine, home association,

but we really appreciate value drug and in the evolution, the 90 plus years, the hard work,

the new warehouse, the new programs that you've come out with, but very much appreciate

the time that you take and the investment that you put into our profession, so thank

you.

Yeah, it's a lot of.

We appreciate you Todd so much and the opportunity that you're giving the voice to pharmacists

that often were never heard, so thank you very much.

Well, thank you.

Hey, we'll be right back with more PPA 2026.

This is Darren Mench with the Population Health team at Jefferson Health and you're listening

to the pharmacy podcast.

Darren, welcome to the show, it's so good to see you.

Absolutely, thanks for having us.

You're very welcome, so talk to me about your role at Jefferson Health as a pharmacist.

What do you do there?

So as part of the Population Health Pharmacy team, we work a lot around our quality metrics.

We mainly focused on medication adherence, stat and breastcribing and A1C control, so we're

helping.

We're embedded in physician offices, mainly primary care offices, and we're working

to help our patients gain access to medications.

We're also working with the providers under collaborative practice agreement to make adjustments

to medications, do a lot of continuous glucose monitoring as well, and mainly gaining access

for patients to their medications.

So what do you feel has changed in our profession, and are there more opportunities for pharmacists

today, or are there less opportunities for pharmacists today?

I certainly think especially with the primary care provider shortage, within physicians,

it's opening up a lot of avenues for pharmacists to kind of fill in some of those roles, work

within the value-based care realm, which is where our team is situated in, and so we've

done a lot of work around our quality metrics, and proving our value, developing that rapport

and those relationships with our physicians, our teams expanded over the last couple years.

So it's great to see that, kind of that sort of hockey stick growth for our team.

All right, and then, are you with the use of all this, with all the scraping of all this data

and all the information that you're collecting?

How is artificial intelligence impacting, reporting, projections, predictive modeling?

Like, talk to me about that side.

Yeah, we definitely have been working with a lot of vendors, and also with our internal team

within our EMR, in order to expand and make the data more accurate, so we've done a lot of work

there, and then we also work with our internal IT team to kind of amplify, make the system work

better, faster, and quicker for the doctors. So we've done a lot of work around real-time

pharmacy benefit, prescription benefit, so that is when the provider is ordering a medication,

they actually get a notice of, hey, there might be a cheaper alternative,

rather than all the back and forth between the pharmacy and the physician office.

So we've implemented some new vendors in that space, and then also we've done a lot of work around

refill protocols. So there's, you know, in baskets for these providers are growing and growing and

growing, with all the messages from the portal for the patients, refills, and such.

So we streamlined all of that, so it's a very quick and easy process for the physicians,

so I work with our Associate Chief Medical Information Officer, Dr. Brian O'Connell,

to work through all those refill protocols for Jefferson. It's been a really cool process

to be a part of, and kind of see, you know, not just impacting the one patient in front of you,

kind of see that throughout the entire enterprise. It's a really cool experience.

Has organizations like Health and Human Services of Pennsylvania State, have they ever reached

out to your hospital system and said, thump something like, hey, could you guys give us some data

on XXX, just from a population health perspective? There's not a ton of, you know, kind of

contact with HHS in that regard, with our team specifically. The majority of our work from a

data standpoint comes from our payers. So we're working with them on a monthly basis. We also have

access to mostly payers in our area, direct access to pull our own reports as well. We're working

towards ways to work with our EMR to automate that, so we don't have to worry about going in,

manually pulling it, just kind of on an automatic cadence comes through. We haven't done a ton of

reporting right now. We're in the process of getting credentialed and privileged within our

health system, so that's kind of the next step for us as well. Darren, I've been waiting to talk to

you very much. I appreciate you making this time for me at the Pennsylvania Pharmacist Association,

and really appreciate you being part of the chef. Yeah, thanks for having me.

PPA 2026, one of the most exciting parts of coming to conferences is talking with the future

of pharmacy, and that is Haley Monroe. She is with Duquesne University School of Pharmacy. Haley,

welcome to the show. Hi, thank you. All right, so talk to us about, um, you're a P2P3.

I'm a P4. P4, all right. Seriously, nice stuff. The rotations have started, so what,

what field, what sector of pharmacy are you really interested in right now? I'm pursuing hospital

pharmacy, so I'm currently in the process of interviewing for residency programs. Okay,

within a hospital, is there any part of that that you're like, this is what I'd really like to do,

for example, pediatrics or emergency medicine or something, or is it, is there a facet of

health system that you're interested in? Yeah, I really love emergency. I found so far through

my rotations. And then talk to me about your vision of what you're hearing from other P4s.

What's the profession look like today, then, because I mean, I entered 22 years ago, I feel,

but what's the, what's the consensus out there about our new pharmacist coming out of pharmacy school?

Yeah, I think the most exciting thing for us is really just the independence that pharmacists

can have now, really just being your own practitioner and advocating for your patients, advocating

for their safety, what medications you would want. And I think knowing that providers are a lot more

accepting of pharmacy now is something that's really exciting for us. Now, what about the technology

side of things? I don't know if they've ever talked to you about digital therapeutics or pharmacogenomics

or, you know, disease state research. Is there anyone in your class that is going and doing

something that, or is talking about something that's very untraditional? Yeah, I think there's a few

students in my class that are pursuing kind of the more research aspect of pharmacogenomics and

really looking at how medications affect specific patients and being able to advocate for those

patients. What has Duquesne University done in the school aspect to kind of sprinkle on

things that are happening, you know, throughout the world and the pharmacy space to really

kind of peak interest of our young pharmacists? Yeah, so our P-3 year, we actually have a class

called Innovations that essentially is a semester-long course that covers everything that's

up and coming in pharmacy, which is a super good experience for us to have. Haley, excited to talk

to you here at the PPA 2026. Thanks for being part of the show. Thank you.

This is Maya Camine, also known as the Superman pharmacist here listening to the pharmacy podcast

life. Skip back pharmacy here at the PPA 2026 doctor, Mac in the house, a pharmacy 50 alumni,

you are a force to be reckoned with, a force of good, a force of giving. And when I think of you,

when I see you on social media, that's what I think of, I think of giving. And you've taught me a lot

about giving because I have a hard time myself, Dr. Mac, always putting out, and that's all you're

doing for your community is putting out, you're putting out salt because the roads are bad,

you're putting out vaccine because vaccines are needed, you're putting out advice. Dr. Mac,

it's so good to see you. Todd, it's always a pleasure to be on this, and it's always important that

positive stories are being shared out there with this world because oftentimes we turn on the

television or listen to the radio and all you see is negativity. You see bombs, you see people hating

each other, you see shootings, but it's barely here and there that you hear a positive story of

someone helping somebody else out there. And I think it's time that we make this contagious

and that it's not only skip back doing this, there's so many pharmacy owners around the country

doing this week to week, but their stories have to be told and people like you are giving them

an avenue to do that. So thank you so much for doing that. Absolutely. I look at your, I've

remembered you when you were just starting and your passion, your passion's still there.

And even though your business acumen has matured, the passion has never changed. And I think that our

pharmacy owners who are frustrated right now are hospital system pharmacists who are frustrated,

are specially pharmacists or compounding pharmacists that are frustrated, whatever you're

frustrated about. If you return to the innocence of being a pharmacist, of the reason that you

wanted to do this in the first place and you revitalize and you re-light that fire in your soul,

that's why I always am gravitated towards you, Dr. Mac is because you have that fire that's

coming out of you. I just remember my youth and specifically graduating pharmacy school.

That's probably the only time I've read that oath of a pharmacist, but within that oath of a

pharmacist, one of the main things that I remember is that we're here to take care of people.

And that's the reason why I signed up to be a pharmacist. See, ever since I was younger,

I wanted to find a profession where I can truly go out and help somebody, even if I didn't know them.

And I went through pharmacy school, graduated, read that oath, and no matter what I did after that

point, I wanted to combine the aspect of providing a human experience, no matter what kind of

environment you're in, because oftentimes, you know, you might be working for a pharmacy,

it's very stressful, the phone calls are going off the hook, somebody pulling up to the drive-through,

and then you forget that there might be someone at the drive-through that has cancer.

And you by just slamming that window on them, because you're frustrated, because the amount of

phone calls or some metrics that you might have to meet, you're just closing that door on someone

who may only have a few days left to live. And if we start treating people with care and dignity

and treating them as if they're our own family member, I think the way that we as pharmacists and

pharmacy technicians can view our patients will change dramatically. Just imagine that that person

that the drive-through is not just a patient, but that's your mother or that's your child,

that's your husband or your wife. And the more we start thinking that, our attitudes will change

because there's no way in hell that any of us will mistreat our own family members. Likewise,

we'll start caring about that patient, we'll give them a minute more to speak to us about problems

they have, and actually go the extra mile instead of just saying, it's an aisle three, go figure it out.

Exactly. I always said, you know, I look at the big chains and I say,

Walgreens has a special opportunity, which I was a whole another podcast. I actually wrote a

blog on it about teaming up with independence, but I even think of the the bane of health care,

which is the mechanism of the three big PBMs that aren't adhering to what is truly patient care.

And I think of the goodness in CVS health, for example, there's so many pharmacist and pharmacy

technicians who believe in what they're doing and how do you leverage that passion for loving people

and caring for people and how do you turn that into something monetary, something sustainable,

something profitable. You never had to deviate from care to make money, meaning I'm a capitalist,

like I want capitalism to thrive, but capitalism and greed are two different things.

Greed is a whole, it's a perversion of capitalism. And I think that there's an opportunity to keep

growing as independence, as hospital system, as specialty as compounders, whatever you are,

to leverage what's coming for pharmacy, pharmacies moving away from dispensing and starting to

are being more articulate to the pharmacist's knowledge. And then how does the pharmacist embed

themselves in a community to make changes to public health and public health outcomes? Imagine Dr.

Mack, a pharmacist setting up shop somewhere that there's a pharmacy desert that has people in it

that have to travel 5, 10, 20 miles, no public transportation to get to a place to get some kind

of care. And now you set up there and you go to the government, you go to the state associations,

you go to the state funding and you say, listen, I want to care for the public. I just want to,

and that's it. I want to care for the public. I'm a farm D or I'm a physician or whatever it is.

Like I think there's a new age of pharmacy care coming. You're absolutely right. And you kept on

reiterating the word care. I think no matter what direction that we head with pharmacy, as long as we

keep that aspect of care in pharmacy, we're heading the right direction. Eventually payers will see

even if they don't directly see someone's going to force them to see it. I just spoke to a reporter

right before this. He was asking about Medicaid reimbursements in Pennsylvania. And we talked about

pharmacy deserts. I gave him a prime example. Two days ago I was heading home. I'd live about two

hours away from my pharmacy. And I had to make a delivery. Somebody asked, why are you making the

delivery? You own the pharmacy. And I'm like, because if I had to pay a company to make the delivery,

I'd probably lose money. And then I gave him the example that this patient has six prescriptions

and they were important medications, diabetes, heart health. And things that this patient absolutely

needs, but they're homebound. They can't leave their house. So that's why I feel bad for the person.

And I'm going to go drop off the medication to that patient's house. The other night before I was

heading out, I was like, let me just look at the gross profit column. Not that that encouraged me to

provide this person any better or worse service. And I saw that every single one of those six

prescriptions was a gross profit of less than a dollar. 53 cents, 26 cents. And then I scratched

my head and then I kind of understood of why so many independent owners are very frustrated with

what's happening. When you're going to pay your staff, you know, increases with the wages

every year. You're going to electric bill. You're at increases. And the cost to fill up

prescriptions, $12. And the gross profits, 53 cents, you're actually losing $11.47 on that

prescription. Multiply that by six times 12. That's how much you're losing to help this patient.

And it's sad and unfortunate, but these are the stories that our legislators need to hear.

And I've tried to do my best to make sure that this little story, I want the news to report on it.

They can use my name. They don't have to use my name. But a lot of owners and a lot of pharmacists

are scared of what can happen to them if they open their mouths and share their stories or

share their voices. I'm sure even with you, if someone had to open up and they might work for

another company, they may hold back from saying certain things. You might have to robotize voices,

but I can bet that if you went into a place where you see some of these wrong things happening,

the employees want to speak up. They're just scared to speak up because that company provides

them with a paycheck and they have to take care of their families. So they just kind of zip their

mouth and do what they have to do. But even for those individuals, I mean, there comes a point where

you have to be concerned about yourself and the people you care for and just keep that aspect

of care there and keep on knocking the door because I think we're a lot further now than we

were five years ago, especially with the movement. It's because people are more vocal, people are

recording things, people are sharing stories. And we need to keep that momentum moving.

Tell me why do you keep coming back to the Pennsylvania Pharmacist Association's annual event

where your time is limited, you have a family, you have a business, there's national shows,

there's people that would like you to come talk, you know, they probably pay you to come talk at

some event. Why do you keep coming back to the PPA? You have to support the people that support you.

While many people don't realize it, Vicki Elliott, a lot of the people that are here from the PPA staff,

they work day and night. Sometimes we're texting them at 11 o'clock at night. That's a normal hour for

us, but for them, they have to be back here at 7 o'clock in the morning to set up or do other things.

They're not fighting for PPA. They're fighting for us as pharmacists, the pharmacy technicians in our state.

So they're giving their all just to support us. And at the end of the day, they're caring for

Pennsylvanians. The least that we can do is show up for them. And conferences like this allow us

to show up for our state. Because at the end of the day, you go to a national conference. Yes,

there's national issues, but you have to figure out what's going on in your own backyard before

you can worry about the world. So true. And yes, there's federal legislators that we have to

be in touch with, but there's so many here in Pennsylvania, literally right across the street,

including the governor, who hear our stories. So many of the things that have changed in Pennsylvania

have happened because we've all come together as a group, whether it's the wholesalers like value drug,

PPA, P-A-R-D in Philadelphia. A lot of these organizations work behind the scenes with each other.

Day and night, every Thursday that morning, there's a call eight o'clock where a lot of these folks

get together and talk about issues that people like myself might have. And we share them the issues.

They figured out just like our patients tell us their issues. And then they hope that we can figure

it out. Yeah. Likewise, we're hoping that Vicki and the team here is listening to our voices.

And that we're not hoping we know they actually listen to us because things that we complain about

or even voice are concerns about. They're taking it very seriously. One prime example is

in the past season, vaccines federally, especially the COVID vaccines. There was a lot of questions

about it. And in Pennsylvania and actually throughout the country, we as, you know,

providers believe it's a personal choice. If you want to get a vaccine, great. If you don't want to

get one, that's fine. Everyone's a grown-up adult. You can make your own choices, but people should

have a choice. So we were fighting for that because in Pennsylvania and across the country,

unless your state had provisions that allowed you as a pharmacy to vaccinate,

we weren't going to be allowed to vaccinate people for the COVID vaccine. So at that time,

we reached out to the organizations like PPA and Vicki and the team were right there with us

reached out to the governor's office. And initially, something that was supposed to be

curved on a meeting agenda item for a month afterwards was met. And, you know, within a week,

they approved it and they found a way for us to be able to service our patients. And this

happens because of organizations like this who are there listening to us. And honestly, sometimes,

you just have to show face. You learn one or two things and you have your money's worth of

the registration fees, your travel time, your time away from your family. And this is one of those

conferences where I think it's super important that happens. Dr. Mack, thank you so much for being a

guest here on the PPA 2026. It's so not only enlightening for me, but it charges me up when I

talk to you. So thank you for being here. Thank you, brother. Oh, it's a pleasure.

The Pennsylvania Pharmacist Care Network, or PPCN, is transforming how community pharmacy

contributes to patient care across the commonwealth. PPCN is a network of more than 200 pharmacies

committed to delivering high quality patient-centered care that goes far beyond traditional dispensing.

Through PPCN, pharmacists collaborate with physicians, health plans, and healthcare

providers to improve medication use, enhance outcomes, and lower the total cost of care.

Their pharmacists deliver services like comprehensive medication management, immunizations,

medication synchronization, chronic disease support, and other enhanced clinical services

designed to help patients stay healthier and avoid unnecessary hospitalizations.

What makes PPCN unique is it's focused on measurable outcomes.

Member pharmacies participate in a clinically integrated network that emphasizes accountability,

performance, and real patient results. By working directly with payers and healthcare partners,

PPCN creates sustainable reimbursement opportunities for pharmacies providing these

critical care services. For pharmacists, PPCN offers the opportunity to expand beyond dispensing

and become a vital part of the healthcare team. For patients, it means better medication

management, improved health outcomes, and more personalized care right in their neighborhood pharmacy.

Learn more about how PPCN is advancing pharmacy practice and improving patient care

across Pennsylvania at p-a-pharmacistnetwork.com. That's p-a-pharmacistnetwork.com.

Jay's it had to be years ago. It was back in my HD Smith days when

Rob Marriweather, for goodness sakes, introduced me to Todd Lazer, and I've been connected to you Todd

through LinkedIn since 2013 for goodness sakes. I'm starting to feel well.

Twelve years ago. Rob Marriweather. Hello Rob.

Remember that. Yes.

But you've been a veteran of the pharmacy space for quite some time. You've lived it. You've

breathed it. You've seen things changing. Value drug company is really a success story because

what 90 years old, 90 years, and existing. Over 90 years old. That's crazy. But to be able to

still stay in business and be able to pivot, implement technology, implement services that

are going to hold a high performing independent community pharmacy in a competitive state.

Talk to me about the overall success and the longevity of being in this business and how

value has sustained actually thrived.

Yeah. I think for us, we have to change. Just like the pharmacies have to change.

You know, we built a new warehouse several years ago. So for automation, we had to stay up to the

time to stay up to what our pharmacies are doing. They're their demands. And so I think the

how we've been successful is the partnership we have with our pharmacies. It's a very intimate

relationship we have with them to understand their business, their needs. And I think it's the

passion of the value drug team that just infiltrates from our entire organization that we have the

passion. We have employees that's been here 20, 30, 40 years and everything we do, we know we have

to provide the best top top class services and support for them to survive. Pharmacies are

struggling with reimbursements. They're cash flow. And you know, we're doing everything we can

with them to partner with them to understand their business, their needs, and how we can help them

thrive and succeed in these challenging times. When I started seeing certain new PBM models coming

to the market, the key word that was being thrown around seven to ten years ago was the word

transparency. How you drug? I've heard from your I've heard from your ballbuster customers out

there. Shout out to Sean Narrow and out of Pittsburgh, but he says about transparency and about

feeling like he's dealing with a partner and not necessarily just a wholesaler.

What what is where's that philosophy come from? Well it all starts that we are co-op

and I think the transparency everything we do is for our members. And the transparency we are

there beyond transparent with our customers, we have to be. Because at the end of the day, if our

members don't survive, we don't survive. So the transparency is key to us and to understand

to be truthful where we're at, how we can help and how we can support them. But the key is

understanding and really partnering with them to understand their business needs because every

pharmacy is different. There's different models, different patients, so it's key to understand

what and how they go to market and how best that we can service them. I remember it was

regional back in the day, but how many states now are you as value covering with like active

clients throughout the nation? Yeah, I mean we right now, if you want to say next day

Courier, it's about 12 states and we're looking to grow further. We obviously ship FedEx UPS,

nationwide to different states down the Florida, etc. But next day Courier as a full line wholesaler,

it's roughly about 12 states. I think there's such an advantage to having a partnership with

a wholesaler that has that direct communication with their clients and the daily communication and

the team. I've loved working with you guys, you know, shout out to Rick, shout out to John to James.

He was on our pharmacy 50 awards program. It was so much fun to have him on. Your support,

a value drug support of our publication has been very important and that's why we're here at the

PPA 2026. So Todd, thanks so much for your support and being here. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thanks for your time. Hey, this is Johnson Adley from TGM Labs and you're listening to the pharmacy

podcast. Jonathan Adley here at the Pennsylvania Pharmacist Association, 2026 meeting the PPA,

Jonathan, it was great to run into you here. Same here Todd, it was a super exciting seeing you.

Hey, let's jump right in. We're going to cut right to the mustard. I like it. Artificial

intelligence. Let's talk about like the top three things that a pharmacy owner really needs to pay

attention to the opportunities that are before them in leveraging such technology. They didn't have

two years, five years, 10 years ago. Yeah, I mean, look, opportunities really comes in two buckets.

You use AI to save money or you use AI to make money. So how can you use AI to save money? There is

the data entry stuff that we're doing, which is essentially you have the AI

inter-prescriptions for you. You can also do the same with sticks messages with voice AI.

That's an easy bucket and I think it's very obvious. The second thing, you can use AI for a lot of

the marketing that you do as well as a lot of the sales. For independent pharmacies,

inventory is one of the biggest expenses. To find the best option, you've been checking

multiple suppliers. AI can cut the boxes there. It's spending about two to three, four, five hours,

and primary market simplifies the process. It is an online form of supermarkets where

pharmacies can compare prices from a wide network of trusted suppliers and other medications

directly from one platform. This means for purchasing better sports control and more time

ending. The pharmacy can have additional rags. For example, if someone is an insulin,

they're not in perfect supply. AI can track that from chapter to chapter. Now you can

upsell their buddy supplies, something that the patient needs. That only makes you money.

It's clinical value as well. Over the counter supplement, if there's a medication with a side

effect, let's say someone has a UDI, you can always upsell them like a cranberry supplement.

So there's some people using AI in this way and you can add really good value to the pharmacy.

So when it comes to Pennsylvania, are there groups of pharmacies or pharmacies or health systems

that you've been working with maybe attending the PPA 2026?

Yeah, so I would say, I know Todd was just talking about you being in Pittsburgh and I'm

thinking of all of our customers in Pittsburgh. So we have Walbrook family pharmacies.

Oh nice. Yeah, one of our probably like second customer ever,

third customer ever, I should say. We have zeal specialty pharmacies also in Pittsburgh.

Jonathan Argercheck. Yeah, he's been using us. He's been like, you know,

very, very much on the frontier of AI, very, very innovative guy. Same for Britain,

from Walbrook family pharmacies. We have custom care pharmacies with Adam Rzenski,

again, a very innovative guy doing great things in his pharmacy. Over in the Philly area,

we have the art of medicine, Jack. So yeah, I mean, this is, literally, this is all the groups

where I personally was involved in them and today we have 175, so I'm sure I forgot.

A few there. Yeah, a few pharmacies here on there. So Jonathan, we always enjoy having you on

the programs. Thank you so much for being on twerks the last minute. We have a special twerks

coming up with you and we're going to probably bring on a client with you in order to kind of dial

in it into what it means from their perspective to deliver J. Yeah, I'm super excited about that.

It's always nice to hear people talk about AI in a practical, non-hype way of how to actually

improve your business. So thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thanks, Doc.

Jennifer Erso here at the PPA 2026. It's so good to see you. Nice to see you too. Thanks for

having me, Todd. We've been emailing. You told me that there's another Jennifer Erso,

so I was like the name Erso kept coming up, coming up, was confusing me.

Someone asked me about her here today. I've never had it on for you to meet her. I hope to do that

someday. We've got to get a picture with you guys. All right, let's talk about

role of the pharmacist, the impact on patient care, but I want to kind of put the technology

twist on it. You've been in pharmacy long enough to remember probably some of the now outdated

systems that were out there. What are you excited about when it comes to pharmacy and technology?

I think there's a lot that we can do to automate a lot of very manual tasks. We know that we do

so much work. I mean, I've lived a large portion of my career in spreadsheets, mining data.

There's so many tools and opportunities to make things automated, make it easier, make the

pharmacist more able to provide and deliver patient care in a very specific way that eliminates

that manual nature of, again, data mining and sort of that process that's, again, very time consuming.

But then also, when you're a pharmacist, there's a way that you see specific clinical data,

the way that other people won't, that being able to hone in on things, especially if it's

trending with where a patient was two years ago on a maintenance med and where they are today and

what the outcome is, they're, they're in lies and importance of using data as a pharmacist.

I agree, and I don't think that any technology or agentic AI or anything like that can actually

replace the clinical decision-making. I just think we need to sort of lean into it to be able to

use it and make it make us more efficient so that we can do more with the information that we have.

I think things like key metrics, outliers, all the things that, again, we've done so manually

for so many years. So I was talking to a young pharmacist on this week in pharmacy several months

ago and I always talked, when I talk to my kids about ranking things, I'll say something like,

on a scale from one to 10. So my parent, my kids constantly say, oh, here comes Dad with his

scale from one to 10. But I said to this, this young pharmacist, I'm like, on a scale from one to 10

from the use of AI, I said, I think I'm about a five out of 10 and using it. But then after I

talked to him, I realized I was like only like a two or a three because of how fast and how fast,

fast and fast, how it's AI is impacting everything. So I'm a great user of ChatGPT to help me,

you know how embarrassing to say this. I started using it as a spell checker originally and like

being able to like structure my emails or my reports that I'm doing. Talk to me about AI

in the pharmacist. I think it's a blue ocean. Yeah. I really do. I'll tell you, I think it's

interesting what you say to about using it for ChatGPT. I think it's really very beneficial and

start small. Do it for research on an organization or research on a company or trying to find some

some metrics that you're looking for for something. I think that it's important to be

inclusive of the disclosure that you're using it for sure if you're using it for any kind of

publication or presentation. But I think that there's a lot to be said for what that looks like.

And I am not a bad engineer by any stretch, but I do think that there's really a big space for

the development of tools that will help with all of those things. So the spreadsheet

comment that you made, I can take metrics. So we've been doing this for, we're the first podcast

came out in 2009. So it's been 17 years. We've been podcasting about pharmacy. Congratulations.

Hey, thank you. And I took all of my data from 17 years and I gave it to ChatGPT and I started

asking it growth questions. And it literally started mapping out. You should be talking more about

disease states or you should be talking more about because it found what trends of which of our

podcasts episodes were getting listened to more than others. I thought that was fascinating.

So those key indicators and those sort of specific data points or elements that it pulls out.

How long would it have taken you to do that? I wouldn't even have attempted it. It would have

taken way too long. And again, I'm not suggesting that it's, you know, you take your PHI and you put

it in a chat, DVD by any stretch. I just think that there's a lot of ways that we can utilize that

or whether it's de-identified or through secure platforms because they exist as well to really

get to the model of things faster that let us dig into it, specifically managing a problem.

Jennifer, I was thinking also the role of the pharmacist, personalized care,

is there any sector of pharmacy that you're most excited about as a pharmacist? Are you looking

at special theory, looking at compounding and thinking, boy, something real dynamic is happening

there? So my career has been in post-acute care. So I've worked in skilled nursing facilities,

this is living facilities, that sort of post-acute care environment. And I think that it's constantly

changing. It challenges every aspect of the industry of pharmacy. If you're looking at that sort

of umbrella has its own set of challenges. But this is a unique challenge to me because we have,

everyone talks about the silver tsunami and how many patients age into 65 and older populations

every day. I think that there's a need to assess how that looks and what that looks like in the

look of the ortho-acute care industry. Primarily because I see the skilled nursing industry is getting

more acuity from hospitals and I see this as a living having to adapt as well. What we used to see

in skilled nursing may be an assisted living in the future. They're having to figure out ways to

care for sicker patients in all of these aspects of that post-acute care field. And I think that

pharmacists are uniquely positioned to help with that. Jennifer, thank you so much for talking to me

here at the PPA 2026. Thanks for inviting me. My pleasure.