Joe Lassiter, President and Managing Adviser of The Robertson Group, highlights ways in which pharmacists can combine their clinical skills with information technology to provide safe, effective, and efficient patient care.
Name: Joe Lassiter
Position: President and Managing Advisor, The Robertson Group
Interview Summary
Today on The Nontraditional Pharmacist, we are joined by Joe Lassiter. Joe is the President and Managing Advisor of The Robertson Group, a clinical informatics advisory firm with certified, licensed pharmacists and nurses specializing in clinical workflows and technology solutions for patients in all care settings. They optimize clinical information systems to provide safe, effective, and efficient patient care. The Nontraditional Pharmacist feels strongly that technology will continue to play a larger role in healthcare, including the field of pharmacy, so we are very excited to hear more from Joe.
1. Tell us more about your career path. Where did you start and how have you gotten to where you are today?
- Started at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy right after high school
- One of the few independent schools of pharmacy left
- Still offered a 5-year Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy program at the time
- Dove right into organic chemistry while friends were off partying
- Made many lifelong friends that are still in contact today
- Pharmacy profession converted to the PharmD Program right as Joe was graduating
- Decided to just start practicing and not spend anymore time in school
- Learned that he enjoyed patient care
- Really enjoyed working on the population-health level
- High level view of what happens to all patients rather than just individual patients in clinic
- Truly enjoys this type of patient care and feels this is where he makes a difference
- Returned to school and earned a Master’s of Science in Pharmacy Administration
- Focused on managed care pharmacy
- St. Louis had a close relationship with Express Scripts and had the opportunity to work with their pharmaceutical business development
- Designed clinical programs
- Learned the power of technology and how patient data could be harnessed, measured, and evaluated to make a big difference
- First taste of pharmacy entrepreneurship
- Moved through a couple of different academic medical centers
- Had the opportunity to join the informatics team at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Oregon
- Had an opportunity to work with Epic (which he knew nothing about at the time)
When people give you opportunities, take them!
- Was immersed in electronic health records, Epic as a vendor, interfacing technology, informatics, etc. and just ran with it
- Made some connections about patient-level vs. population-level care
- As a pharmacist, could adjust antibiotic dosing to impact one patient at a time
- Writing a clinical decision-making tool would be used by every provider that cares for that patient
- Worked in academia for a small time
- Local college was starting a new pharmacy program
- Worked with them on the pharmacy administration program
- Moved over to the University of Michigan
- A wonderful organization to be a part of
- Helped to implement Epic there and was exposed to some great mentors
- Last opportunity to have an Epic implementation with a large academic medical institution
- Switched over to consulting
- Joined The Robertson Group as a pharmacy consultant and Chief Pharmacy Officer
- Role was in pharmacy development and flushing out what “informatics consulting” really was
- Worked in this role for a few years, then took over the company
- Founder/owner retired
- Gave Joe the opportunity to lead a company
- This leads us to the present day
- Think about where pharmacy is going
- Systems-level thinking and skills are important for pharmacists to provide value to the entire medication process
- Pharmacists are involved in not just dispensing, but also medication education, monitoring, and other things like that
- Pharmacists naturally have the ability to take a leadership role in systems thinking in healthcare organizations
2. What exactly is The Robertson Group?
- Many big consulting firms that exist
- Do a wide range of consulting from healthcare auditing to lean practice improvements
- The Robertson Group focuses on the niche of using technology to better people’s practices
- Everyone that works for The Robertson Group is somebody who’s practiced before (nurse, pharmacist, pharmacy technician, lab technician, etc.)
- These clinical staff members learn the technology side of things and help bridge the gap
- There is a big gap that exists between I.T and clinical operations/clinical practice
- Large implementations/technological changes have an impact on the whole organization/business
- Can change the mantra and culture of these places
- Provide advisory service to organizations that need help accomplishing these big projects
- Example case
- Institution was implementing a new module into their electronic health record that affected oncology patients
- The Chief Pharmacy Officer wanted pharmacists to help implement this
- Oncology patients are an at-risk population, very important, very costly, narrow therapeutic index for these agents
- Provided expertise on how the build should exist, help with end-user training, one-on-one training to the pharmacists, nurses and providers
- The project took about a year, but will have lasting implications forever
3. How did The Robertson Group start?
- Nan Robertson, a pharmacist by training
- Worked for Kaiser Permanente, one of the first organizations to adopt Epic Corporation for their new electronic health record
- Started off as the Systems Director of Pharmacy and Lab Director
- After going through the Epic implementation, realized that other people would need help with the process
- Hand-picked a few people from Kaiser Permanente and setup shop insider her own house (started in 2004)
- There have been federal stimulus packages designed to get people to adopt in health information technology
4. Describe your role within The Robertson Group and any other teams that are involved in the business.
- Describes himself as a Unicorn Hunter
- Have to find people who have experience crafting their craft, but also know informatics and have experience practicing, and have the wherewithal to be able to be parachuted into a client site and help solve their problems
- Makes it tough to find suitable candidates for employment
- Long-term goal is to increase the number of people who do this type of work
- They are a small to medium-sized business
- Finds himself wearing many hats
- As president, in charge of overall fiscal and operational responsibilities in addition to new client development, marketing, etc.
- Also does consulting work, while managing other consultants
5. Where is The Robertson Group heading in the future?
- You always need to keep changing and adapting to what’s going on
- Listen to what your clients are saying
- Bread and butter is currently advisory services
- Focused on the West Coast of the US and on Epic
- Cerner (a competitor to Epic) has really come to rise
- In the process of launching advisory services for software companies
- Started to realize that even though the electronic health record is great, there needs to be things that plug into it
- Epic and Cerner aren’t going to come up with everything
- Looking at a lot of different partnerships at this time
- Developing software may be a future direction of the company
6. Is The Robertson Group hiring? How do people find more information about job opportunities?
- In a constant state of hiring based on the flux in the market
- Always happy to connect with people
- Networking and developing relationships are key
- Keeps a running list of people to contact
- Has specific Full-Time Employees (FTE’s)
- Majority of workforce are employees
- Also retain subcontractors that specialize expertise in certain areas
- One project helped a client to manage their formularies
- Always looking for great people to add to the team
- Especially those that are classically informatics trained (doing a residency or experience in the field)
- People tend to think that consultants are the experts in the room
- Really, it’s an outside person who is able to listen to all voices and provide a lot of value based on experience
- You’ll never know everything you need to know
- How to contact Joe
7. What advice would you give to people that are looking to do something different with their career but don’t know where to start?
- Find a fit and see where you can provide value
- Find something you’re passionate about, where you can give back
- Things are always going to be challenging
- There is a lot of opportunity at work sites right now
- Take the onus and ask for new roles and responsibilities
- Even if there isn’t a spot on the informatics team, but maybe on a committee that talks about implementing these changes
- Study some of these certifications on your own time
- Go to your employer and ask for a chance
- Most places would rather grow their own people than have to hire externally
- Look for mentors
- It doesn’t have to be formal, even a 30 minute phone call here and there
- Co-mentoring: where you help each other out
- People are willing to share their time
- You just need to ask
8. What is your assessment of the field of pharmacy today and where do you see it heading in the future?
- Pharmacy organizations are banding together to seek out provider status for pharmacists
- This is really an administrative thing, getting added to Social Security Acts
- We’re already doing the work, but having the formal recognition for owning the medication use process is what needs to happen next
- Pharmacists help patients achieve medication use outcomes
- Pharmacists are well-poised to straddle the conversation about clinical care and the economics of healthcare
- The use of technology is expanding
- We shouldn’t just be using technology, it should be solving problems
- Increased adoption of technology will allow us to do more things
- Spend an hour counseling a patient
- Reaching out to a caregiver to make sure they understand the medication
- We need to consider the political, economic, and clinical factors as practitioners moving forward
If you have interest in a career with The Robertson Group or as a consultant pharmacist in general, reach out and connect with Joe. We encourage everyone to create a profile on The Pharmacy Network where you can meet all of our guests and expand your own personal pharmacy network. Please comment below if you or anyone you know works as a consulting pharmacist!