Episode 20: Provider-Ready Now- Residency & Credentialing for Independent Growth

In this episode, host Suzanne Feeney, PharmD, Senior Director, Pharmacy Solutions at McKesson Health Mart and guest Jaime Montuoro, PharmD, Director of Education & Practice Advancement at McKesson Health Mart, unpack two strategies you can deploy now: PGY1 community-based residencies and pharmacy credentialing. You’ll learn how residency trained pharmacists can elevate clinical care in workflow, fuel change and help launch billable services. Then, we get practical on credentialing—why becoming “provider ready” matters and how claiming your team’s Pharmacy Profiles credentials streamlines payer opportunities. Jaime shares real-world wins, including how Bryant Family Pharmacy partnered with a resident to implement prescriptive authority programs patients were willing to pay for. If you’re ready to move beyond the transaction and build sustainable, community anchored care, this playbook will help you start today.

Host
Suzanne Feeney, PharmD
Sr. Director, Pharmacy Solutions
McKesson / Health Mart

Guest
Jaime Montuoro, PharmD
Director, Education and Practice Advancement
McKesson / Health Mart

Resources
Tune into Episode 11: Maximizing Operations Through Proactive Workflow 

Health Mart Pharmacies can access Health Mart University (HMU) for:

• Health Mart pharmacists to claim their CE credit for weekly GameChangers episodes

References
Learn more about the Health Mart Postgraduate Year One Community-based Pharmacy Residency Program here

Pharmacy Profiles is a pharmacy-friendly database that allows pharmacy teams to showcase their training and certifications in one place. If you’re a Health Mart pharmacy demonstrate your pharmacy’s readiness to receive potential patient care opportunities more quickly by having your pharmacy professionals claim their MYPROFILE. Learn more here: my.pharmacyprofiles.com. Pharmacy Profiles is a Strategic Health Alliance II, Inc., vendor.  

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guest and do not necessarily represent the views or positions of Health Mart, McKesson or its affiliates or subsidiaries ("McKesson”). The information provided herein is for informational purposes only and does not constitute the rendering of clinical, legal or other professional advice by McKesson.

Transcript

Suzanne: [00:00:00] Welcome to McKesson Health Mart Independent Insights, the podcast built for independent pharmacy supporters who want to grow efficiently, expand their services, and lead the future of pharmacy. My name is Suzanne Feeney, and I'm a pharmacist and Senior Director of Health Mart Pharmacy Solutions on the McKesson Health Mart team. 

Today we're diving into two powerful strategies that can shape the future of your pharmacy. PGY1 Community-based pharmacy residencies, and pharmacy credentialing. These things are obviously not the same, but they really work hand in hand. A residency builds clinical experience and expertise, leadership and service innovation, guiding new graduates, and giving your pharmacy the skills to deliver advanced patient care.

Credentialing ensures those qualifications are recognized by payers, networks and partners, so your independent pharmacies can participate in programs, bill for services, and reinvent your pharmacy practice. Together, both residencies and credentialing really work to [00:01:00] position independent pharmacies to lead in a world where care delivery is expanding beyond the prescription counter and to deliver individualized community-based care.

Are you looking for ideas to grow independent pharmacy and make a greater impact in your community? Look no further. Welcome to Independent Insights, the podcast brought to you by Health Mart. Episodes delve into a wide range of topics to provide you with the practical strategies, expert insights, and inspiring stories to help you and your pharmacy excel.

The information provided is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute clinical, legal, or any other type of professional advice from Health Mart, McKesson, or its affiliates and subsidiaries (“McKesson”). You acknowledge and agree that McKesson will have no liability with respect to, or relating to any information presented in this podcast. Pharmacies are encouraged to consult with their legal and business advisors before making any [00:02:00] decisions that could affect their business operations. 

Pharmacists are expected to exercise reasonable care as dictated by legal and professional standards and are ultimately responsible for decisions related to patient care and medication management. It is your responsibility to review and comply with all applicable state and federal laws, rules, and regulations governing your business operations. This includes laws applicable to businesses in general, those pertinent to employers, and those specifically regulating the practice of pharmacy.​

Suzanne: So with me today is Jaime Montuoro, and jaime is a pharmacist on the Health Mart team and the Director of Education and Practice Advancement at McKesson Health Mart. Now, normally on this podcast, you hear from your peers, you hear from other owners and those in practice. But I felt really excited and really strongly about bringing Jaime in today because she's the one who inspired me and tons of others of us in the profession through residencies, through practice and community [00:03:00] care and she has just a ton of experience and I know you'll all really enjoy talking with her. She really has one of the strongest visions for how to practice patient care in a community-based setting. So Jaime, thank you for taking time and coming on last minute. We really appreciate that and I just thought you could tell us a little bit about your career journey and your passion and let the audience get to know you.

Jaime: Sure. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be on and I'm really happy to support franchise members as the Director of Education and Practice Advancement currently at Health Mart. Prior to coming on board with McKesson I had a couple of decades long career in community pharmacy. Community practice is where I've been my whole career.

A little stint in pharmacy school, in a hospital, but I always knew that community was right for me. I always think about being an intern in a community pharmacy, learning about things in school and what pharmacists know and can do to help improve patient [00:04:00] outcomes. And then I would go to my grocery store community pharmacy and I would just push my pharmacy manager like, why don't we do it this way? Why do we do it this way? Always trying to bring the knowledge and expertise that I see pharmacists have to patients, to impact them in the community setting. So as I continued on in my career as a student, I was thinking, okay, I need to set my career up right so I can do all these things that I'm dreaming of happening in community practice and ended up stumbling into a community residency showcase where I had, for the first time learned about residencies in that setting. And just immediately knew, okay, this is what I need to do. So I ended up going to do a residency and then just have been involved in residency training ever since being a resident.

My mission in my career is always to raise the bar of what patients expect from their pharmacists, what they receive from their pharmacists and residencies have been a great way to be able to [00:05:00] do that. And then in my current role with Health Mart that is what I'm trying to do is just find opportunities for independent pharmacy owners to meet the needs of their patients even better than they do today.

Suzanne: I love that. And you said, what really resonated with me is what patients expect. And I think that there's so much that we can do to really shift that. So when you're walking into the pharmacy as a patient, picking up the prescription, you can get so much more than just that across the counter intervention.

And I don't know if you remember this. But I remember the first, probably like one of the first days of my residency working next to you at the out window or the pickup window, all the different things we call it and the patient came up and I just did my thing. And I think that consisted of using the register and ringing the patient out and then just sending them on their way and I think of that now and I'm like, oh my gosh, wow. Like how much I learned because then by the end of my residency, and honestly probably by the next day because you're like, whoa, hold on a second. Here's what we can do with the out window.

But it really became such a fun place to be because we did train the [00:06:00] patients that came into that pharmacy that when you picked up a script, it wasn't just a transaction, but it was like, Hey, what's your blood pressure? Or why are you taking this? And I still remember initially patients who would be like, why are you asking me that? Don't you know?

But then just that rich experience of being like, I love spending time with out window, because it became all about patient care. And then you could refer them, to the other section of the pharmacy where you could have more in depth conversations or billable type visits. These are all things we were doing, as you said, decades ago. So to walk into a pharmacy, I just picked up my husband's prescription last night, and it was incredibly transactional. And it's hard to see that is still happening. But I think to your point, there's so much opportunity, especially in the independent space, where we can all be so nimble and make those changes to really change every intervention that's out there.

Or as a mentor of mine, Randy McDonough used to say, make every encounter count. And that's really what it's all about. So I just thought I'd share that memory. I hadn't thought about that in years. 

Jaime: No I think I've either heard from Randy or from you make every encounter count [00:07:00] enough times that, as you were saying, that I was playing in my mind, make every encounter count. And I really feel like sometimes in community practice, we short change those encounters that we have, we don't see them as really what they are, which is an opportunity to make a difference for patients and I understand for sure the constraints of the workflow and busy times and all of that, but we should always be looking for the ways to ask the right questions or to engage in those moments where it really matters to patients and where we have these billable services that have grown over the past couple of decades, maybe not to the extent that we've wanted them to as quickly as we wanted them to. We have more opportunity to be proactive and engineer our workflow, even to position us better to be able to spend the time. And I think that, when you mentioned independent pharmacies being nimble, it's been the most inspiring thing of my time here at Health Mart [00:08:00] is. Being able to see the different things that independent pharmacies are doing to meet the needs of their communities.

And it's very local and different from a chain where it's this cookie cutter approach where, each independent pharmacy can really shift and bend to the needs of their community. And. We've gotta think a lot about like how we do that within our pharmacy workflow to accommodate the time and all the things that can be done, and that I see being done for patients in the pharmacies across Health Mart.

Suzanne: Absolutely. In my previous role where I used to have the opportunity to visit pharmacies across the Midwest area I'd go in, I'd see what's happening, and I would be like, I wanna open my pharmacy, I wanna do this. Because it can be so fulfilling. It's very entrepreneurial and you have the sense to, like you said, shift and bend it to make it meet the needs of your patients and your community. And you're really setting up your time where you don't feel like you're checking prescriptions, you feel like you're really offering patient care, and it can be really [00:09:00] fulfilling. And I think, we're at that point where there's a lot, I'm not trying to minimize the barriers that are out there, the challenges, but there is also a lot of opportunity. But it's hard work and like you, where we dedicate our days is to really try to make sure independent pharmacies have the tools and resources. But it is a lot of blood, sweat and tears to go in and re-engineer your pharmacy or train the staff. And that's where I feel like just talking a little bit about residency programs and credentialing are two tools to think about for our audience and for our listeners today. And so maybe we can just dive a little bit into why residencies can help not only generate a future generation of pharmacies and pharmacists who are providing this sort of care, but really fit into an independent, in a way that isn't cumbersome, but helps the independent grow. So I'll start off and dive in for those who are brand new to residencies, Jaime, what is a PGY1 community-based pharmacy residency? We hear it called all these things like community residency, PGY1. But what is it and what does that residency [00:10:00] bring to an independent pharmacy? 'Cause I know when I decided to do a residency back in the day nobody understood that. They're like, why would you personally wanna do that? Make half the money work, double the hours, and you could just go have a job. So if you can share a little bit about from the resident side as well as then from the independent side why this is important.

Jaime: Yeah, that's great setup because I think people still have those questions even 20 years later. Like, why do a residency, a community pharmacy, of all those places that you could do a residency? So PGY1 stands for post-graduate year one. And so it's, the first year out of school for most residents and residents come in looking for further development, further application of what they learned during school and time to practice, time to better hone skills. Like I mentioned in my journey, becoming a resident was a way that I saw that I could go learn from people who are already doing the things [00:11:00] that I imagined doing, but what a better way to break down some of the barriers of trying to start something up myself than to go learn from others who are already doing it.

And then you take those skills with you no matter where you go. And that's where really from a pipeline standpoint, independent pharmacies that hire community trained residents can really leverage experience that they've gotten during their residency to help them grow the programs in patient care services at their pharmacy.

The other thing I always tell students is residencies are two thirds or more clinical pharmacy focused. So you're doing that in pharmacy workflow or in appointment-based services that are happening at the pharmacy, or sometimes there's a partnership with an ambulatory care clinic to get more breadth and depth of services.

So a lot of it is that clinical patient care experience. But they also do a variety of other things at an affiliated college of [00:12:00] pharmacy within the organization, from a business development strategic planning perspective, and learning from mentors and their preceptors, how to be leaders in community practice.

And I think everyone that is listening to this podcast probably would understand that we need leaders in community practice who are helping to continue to drive it where we need it to go for those patients that come into a community pharmacy. So it's a leadership development program.

I know there's some programs out there school, curriculum that integrates an MBA. And so sometimes I get asked should I do an MBA program or should I do a residency? My answer would be both. Because what a great set of skills that you have, but depends on what you wanna do in your career. Because what the community residency really does is, what I've described, it positions that resident, that graduates to be able to replicate their experience during their residency, wherever they go, because they have the background on [00:13:00] the business and on the industry and on advocacy.

You know, advocacy is often a part of community residencies, which it absolutely should be because we need them to go out in their careers and become the next generation that's continuing to push practice where we need it to go. Again, always thinking of the patient. I always wanna say like for patients. Not necessarily for us, but for patients. 

Suzanne: And a couple of things I think this is obvious and goes without saying, but residents are licensed pharmacists. So they take their boards, they pass their boards, or they're very much in the process of that. And then they're practicing at the pharmacy, which is a little bit different in advanced level than if you're on rotation.

And then one thing I wanna get out into the podcast world is oftentimes when people say community pharmacy what does that mean? Because I hear that term thrown out community or retail. And, I think this is also something that I learned from you, but share with us, what is community-based practice. 

Jaime: Specifically residencies are titled community based because what they're [00:14:00] trying to say there is, it's where the patients are and it's outpatient. So that's one thing. It's not community pharmacy, but it's community based because it could be anywhere where the patients are out in the community.

However, you do bring up my favorite topic, which is the word that I don't use very often in day-to-day conversations is retail. I don't think that adequately represents the role of the pharmacy staff and the pharmacist because retail is a transactional thing and we don't want that.

It's community pharmacy. Another nomenclature or language thing that I always that comes up a lot in residency conversations is even students coming up to me standing in a residency recruiting booth saying, oh, I wanna do a clinical residency. And I say now help me understand the definition of the term clinical residency. And often they mean in a clinic. They're trying to say that in a clinic or in a hospital, that's where you practice clinically, and that is absolutely [00:15:00] false. So we practice clinically wherever pharmacists practice, it's a behavior, it's not a setting. So community residencies are in a community pharmacy that some call retail just to not be confusing, I'm not gonna use that term. And then they are clinical residencies and every encounter, as we already discussed, is a clinical opportunity, and so residents are really leveraging that. 

Suzanne: I think that's the other big point is, I wrote down, you said the residency program is two third clinical, and that could be an appointment, it could be, something that's based in the community health fair, different experiences, but a lot of that happens in workflow. And that was one of the big takeaways for me and why I'm so grateful I did a residency because I really saw how every. I'm air quoting here for our listeners, but every transaction that was me queing a prescription or reviewing a profile, there was so much rich intervention opportunity there that really drove patient outcomes. So practicing that way in workflow is just the most rewarding, [00:16:00] impactful type of environment, and I think that is oftentimes people either don't realize they're doing it or like you said earlier, haven't engineered the workflow to support that. And then it feels very transactional. So to me, one of the reasons I love seeing residents out there in independent pharmacies or within our profession is because they can really learn how to drive that forward. Then, like you just said, any clinical interaction, every interaction you have with the patient is clinical. Is it the right dose, is it safe? And all the things that we're assessing every single time. Each time, and I learned this from you and others I worked with during my residency year, but I'd never checked a prescription without looking at the profile that they were on or talking to the patient about everything. It was never just that prescription. And I think that may be very different from even what is out there now. 

Jaime: I think you and I could talk about this for hours, but I would just throw out too, even the over the counter recommendations that are so often made by community pharmacists, let me come out and show you where to find that cough and cold remedy, or whatever [00:17:00] it is that the patient's asking about.

Even that is an opportunity. We are evaluating we're doing the pharmacist patient care process just in quick order. We're evaluating how the patient is doing, making an assessment, making a plan, which is the recommendation for that over the counter. Again, we don't give ourselves credit sometimes for all the things that we do within each patient encounter.

And I think if we start doing that, which is what we challenge residents to do, then it starts to raise the bar of expectation. And then you can build upon that with more and more ways to meet individual patient's needs, through all the variety of things that pharmacists can do to fill gaps for the patient.

Suzanne: Yeah, absolutely. And I wanna come back and talk a little bit more about the residency program, but I just, I can hear, hear our listeners out there thinking about what we're talking about and how we can do that. And then it's the everlasting question of how are you paid for that, right?

And that is the piece that's been missing because as you do walk across the aisle to show somebody where they can buy the right over the counter. [00:18:00] You're asking the questions, you're making those assessments, you're making a recommendation. And it's like this work that is done that's never really acknowledged or it's valued, but not in the sense of, how do we use this within our business model in community pharmacy setting?

You're listening to Independent Insights, a McKesson Health Mart podcast with host Suzanne Feeney, Senior Director Pharmacy Solutions at McKesson Health Mart. And guest, Jamie Montoro, Director of Education and Practice Advancement at McKesson Health Mart.

Let's continue. 

Suzanne: Switching gears a little bit, and this is where I think that pharmacy credentialing goes hand in hand with residency, can you talk to us about what is pharmacy credentialing and why is it important?

Why does it matter to those out there who are hearing us say that's great Suzanne and Jaime, that we wanna do all those and we wanna have the residents, but how do I keep my doors open if I'm doing those things, and not focus solely on the prescription business?

Jaime: All big questions and big problems to [00:19:00] solve. But I think credentialing really does fit into this conversation because we are at this crossroads and I know I've said that lots of times in my career, but I really feel like we are at this crossroads where something's gonna happen, whether it's happening at your state level or if it's happening federally, the momentum is there and so we have to stay positive and keep pushing to have that become a reality. But in order to then take the next step, so let's say we do get recognized as a provider or a payer is willing to pay us, there's a credentialing process that the payer needs to ensure that pharmacist, provider or pharmacy staff members, whoever's engaged in this, has the right licensure, the right training and all of that so we've all been developing ourselves in different ways, across our careers. And you have information out there. You know, I took this advanced training, I did this certificate training program. How do you bring it all together in one place and then offer that up to a payer so that they have access to it? So the [00:20:00] credentialing is the verification process of yes, you have all the training. But it is a necessary step. It takes some time, like we were talking about workflow, getting that engineered right takes some time and effort to get it in the right place. Credentialing is going to take some time, but it's an absolutely necessary step. The good thing is we can start it right now. And if I can just start talking about pharmacy profiles. 

Suzanne: Yes!

Jaime: It is a credentials verification organization. Some people have probably heard of CAQH, which is another organization that's a credentials verification organization.

CAQH is for all healthcare providers, pharmacy profiles is special because it's specific to pharmacy. So when you start going through this process of bringing all of your credentials to one place and you're doing that through CAQH, I think people get a little bit confused and can have trouble because it's not geared towards pharmacists and pharmacists are different than other healthcare providers and how we practice and how we're licensed and set up.

Pharmacy [00:21:00] profiles is specific to pharmacy and it's free to go in and claim your profile. I think it's been around for years, so you may have heard of it, like I claimed my profile a long time ago, and then it's just been sitting there. But that's what we want. We want not only you as the pharmacist in charge if your technician's listening here and you wanna get your training and credentials in the system, and then create a team so that now my pharmacy of of pharmacy professionals has all of our credentials in one place. And then when there is a payer opportunity that payer can access your credentials to be able to verify that you're ready to be paid for those services. So hopefully that makes sense. It's probably more complicated than that, but that's the basics.

Suzanne: I think that's helpful because when you hear, okay, the first step to billing is getting credentialed, and you're like where, how do I start? Or what plan do I go with? And it feels heavy, cumbersome it feels hard to scale because there's so many different payer [00:22:00] opportunities that could be out there. So for me this is one place that I could go to as a pharmacy team leader and have my pharmacy enroll. It doesn't take long. I think I looked at it, it's five minutes or less. And then you can add on your staff to that and like you said, you're just, you might just be sitting out there, hanging out there.

But everything that you have, all your certificates, all your license, everything is in there. And then the hope is it gets plugged into that opportunity. That feels like a really easy step you listen to this podcast, we can put the link in the show notes. Anyone can go out and they can claim their profile and sign their pharmacy up and that enables you to start a national credentialing process.

I don't think there's anything else that is that simple that you could just click a link and go and do that. So I do think that is a nice first step into scaling. 

Jaime: Absolutely. I agree. And then as I said, like when you have a regional payer or there's something nationally that comes along you're ready. I think that's really the [00:23:00] message that we're sharing at Health Mart is let's get provider ready. Let's do it now. And pharmacy profiles really is positioned well to help us do that more easily. I'm very inspired though by the many pharmacies that I've talked to out there that have managed through the CAQH process and have figured out even sometimes just completely on their own I'm gonna bill this payer and this is how I'm gonna do it. But as we scale it, as you said, using a system like this will help to broaden the opportunities or make that more accessible when it does come. 

Suzanne: Yeah. Make it the standard of care in all pharmacies that you're able to do this. And like you said, there are so many out there that are doing great things, but it could be a full-time job to figure all that out and go through the paperwork.

I love what you said I wrote down what we're doing at Health Mart and hopefully all independents is getting provider ready. And I just feel like since we've talked about some of our favorite subjects with residency and with credentialing, when I hear provider ready, the thing that [00:24:00] instantly comes to my mind is who's doing appointment-based model. So I know you have strong ideas about that too, but I feel like, not that this is what this podcast is about, we have a whole podcast episode with Josh Borer on that. But I do think that's something else that feeds into this, and thinking about it, it sets up a resident, it helps you be provider ready for credentialing, so give us your thoughts on how you've seen them evolve over the years and what you think about ABM as far as practice advancement. 

Jaime: I think appointment-based model is just a requirement because the more, we talk about med sync, which is an aspect of appointment-based model, but I think we've gotta get in control of workflow. We can't let workflow happen to us, we have to control workflow. And the way that we can do that is by helping patients manage refills through med sync, and as a patient, please sync me up, right? So that's like a given. Let's get everything, easier to manage for patients and take [00:25:00] some of that burden off them by getting everything filled at once, contacting their doctor prior to when that's due, to make sure that everything's just packaged nice and neat as possible, but then also allocating the time that when that synced up patient comes, we coordinate any of the services that we need to provide, whether it's immunizations, whether we're gonna do a screening of some kind, we're going to do a disease focused counseling session for them that we're leveraging the time that's been built in because we haven't been scrambling in this reactive workflow to set a little bit of time aside. And I think, over all the years, even outside of appointment-based model, you also have to be aware of when are the right times to have these appointments and when are bad times. So like at the busiest time in the pharmacy for a pickup of refills and whatnot, that people that don't need the extra help, like that's maybe not the time to [00:26:00] do this, but trying to leverage your staff in a way that makes sense and every pharmacy's gonna be different in how their staff is set up to be able to accommodate this. But if we're, again, not wasting so much time in the reactive mode that we get into sometimes in pharmacy workflow, we'll have a little bit of a breather to be able to plan and allocate time for those patients that need our time more if that makes sense. So that's the way I think about it. It's oversimplifying for sure, but I know that appointment-based model and even med sync, it's a big change for pharmacies. I think one of the worst things we can do is be like, oh, piece of cake. You know what? You just do this. That's not gonna set anybody up for success because you gotta get your whole team bought in. You gotta get your patients bought in too, 'cause they are going to be saying like, wait, what's going on? This is confusing for me. And sometimes our reaction to patients' confusion is we wanna pull back and say no, let's make it all a hundred [00:27:00] percent, customer service our as our top priority, which is always true, but sometimes we have to in introduce a little confusion in order to get patients to evolve and learn how they can better interact with the pharmacy.

And then everyone will be happier, we'll be happier, the patient will be happier. And then we again have that time to be able to deliver the level of service that we wanna deliver to patients from a clinical perspective and make the impact.

And then you mentioned residency. And I think, residents first of all, hire a residency trained pharmacist who worked in an environment that had appointment-based model in Med Sync and leverage their experience. And if you need, to implement something new again, community residency trained specifically pharmacists out there are trained to be able to help you decide, okay, how do we get from point A to point B? How are we gonna do this? And then hopefully it's more successful when you have someone with the experience versus what you [00:28:00] feel like you have to come up with it on your own.

Suzanne: I think you hear a lot about the challenges within staffing and hiring pharmacies, especially in some of these rural, independent areas. And I do think, hey, that's a way to widen the net is look for specific residency trained pharmacists who are out there who might be okay with moving. We automatically assume people aren't gonna wanna move to a certain area. But I know when I was in my twenties, if somebody would've offered me the opportunity, hey, come work here and start up a residency program, or help me get set up with credentialing. And I think oftentimes searching for that specific type of candidate when you're filling a staff pharmacist position can be a really good idea. 

Jaime: Absolutely. I would say you won't regret it. You won't regret bringing someone with that experience into your pharmacy. I was thinking of ideaShare this past year. In 2025 we had a pharmacy owner and his immediately post residency or she might've been in her last month of residency. Bryant Family Pharmacy. John Martin is the [00:29:00] owner. And Natalie Novak was now his clinical pharmacist. But they were up on stage and a couple of different things at ideaShare, talking about how Natalie came in as a resident and said, okay, in our state we have this practice authority. She implemented all the prescriptive authority programs in their pharmacy to a great success. And I know John, I heard him say in his pharma talk that he, wasn't sure it could even be done. And then she was able to show him how it could be done, and then he hired her out of residency to continue essentially developing fine tuning and creating new opportunities for patients and that generate revenue too. That's another part of, the work that residents do is understanding, like I said earlier, the business model.

And the importance of these things being sustainable. We're figuring out what is the business model around these services? What is the right price, and that's what [00:30:00] John and Natalie were able to collaborate on during her residency. And, surprised John that people will pay for these visits. Just really cool success story and I'm always extremely proud of residents that make such an impact and what a great opportunity to do that in an independent setting. Whereas sometimes, residents who are working within chains have the constraints of the corporate initiatives that they're working within, but students wanna practice in environments that independent pharmacists offer. 

Suzanne: I think just being able to be so nimble and, come out of doing a residency, work in a pharmacy that is hungry for this type of change, you can make so much of an impact. 'Cause you can make that decision, that day or that week and maybe sometimes it doesn't work like that when you're in a larger chain.

 And with that, I know we have some exciting news that I want to share have you have the chance to talk about, Health Mart and Jaime, you've done a great job partnering with others on the team, but we're going to be launching a community-based residency program in 2026 and I'd love to hear a little bit about that and the vision [00:31:00] behind that and what that means for franchisees. 

Jaime: Yeah, so very exciting. Any job interview I've ever had actually, I've said, okay, what about residency? Like, how do I continue to be involved in residency? So coming to Health Mart, it was no different. I said, what about residency? And luckily there was some alignment and interest and so it was one of the first things I started to work on is developing what a residency would look like within Health Mart, the Office of Health Mart.

So we have one Health Mart Pharmacy that is owned by McKesson. That's in a corporate office setting so lots of employees that they serve, but also the community around that office. So that's Family Pharmacy at Las Colinas, that's our pharmacy practice site. And then for the resident, they'll have experience within Office of Health Mart learning, Suzanne, from you and what I do in my job and the others on our team and how we in the Office of Health Mart help to support the Health Mart franchise members in all the ways.

So they'll [00:32:00] get some of that perspective of scaling beyond a single pharmacy from that experience. And then while it's not required a lot of programs will affiliate with the College of Pharmacy and excited to announce our partnership with University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy.

And what that opportunity brings is the chance to interact with pharmacy students to learn about academia. Residents will go through what's called the Teaching in Learning Fellows Program. It's like a teaching certificate program. So if that resident wants to go on afterwards and work in academia as a community practice faculty member which is something that is very much needed out there they would have the experience to do that.

And then I mentioned earlier that sometimes in community residencies there's collaboration with an ambulatory care clinic as well, where pharmacists are embedded in those clinics, and that's a way to broaden the experience of the residents training, so we'll have an opportunity [00:33:00] for the resident to get more clinical experience outside of the pharmacy in this ambulatory care clinic. But really excited to offer the residency program. We are recruiting now. Applications are due January 5th, actually. It comes up so fast. But this is something from year to year, it's the first year and we'll, keep building upon this as far as improving the program as we offer it here within the Office of Health Mart, but the long-term vision that you asked about is really to help provide practical tools and resources for an independent pharmacy owner within the Health Mart franchise. How can I get involved in residency training at my pharmacy? Typically, most independent pharmacies would work with a college of pharmacy who you know, has a residency program director at the college, and then you become a practice site where the resident is spending their clinical and business development time in your pharmacy. Start conversations with your nearby College of [00:34:00] Pharmacy and really to help everybody understand the value of having a residency program both during the resident year. I always think of it because we get so much from the residents during the year, but then the benefits of that resident after they graduate and what they do for your community, for your pharmacy and or beyond out there in our industry, really promoting community pharmacy practice. 

Suzanne: I'm so excited about that. I don't think I realized the opportunity that was in the independent world when I graduated pharmacy school, or that most likely would've been a path I would've loved to have taken. It sounds exciting for me. So maybe I'll go back and do an independent residency. We'll see. 

Jaime: You can't walk into any pharmacy without wanting to stay in practice or now you wanna do another residency. 

Suzanne: I know it's inspiring and just exciting. Thanks so much for joining us on this episode of McKesson Health Mart Independent Insights. We really got a lot of time to explore two strategic opportunities for independent pharmacies out there with, I think some action items that people could take back [00:35:00] today.

So residencies looking at really bringing in your advanced clinical training and innovation to your practice, and Jaime, I heard you say, if you're out there and this is something you're interested in contact your local school of pharmacy and just see if you could become a practice site, even if you start precepting residents, that it's not a year long basis, but just getting them into your pharmacy or they do residency projects, I'm sure that there's some collaborative opportunities there. So definitely a way to get started with that. And then we talked about pharmacy credentialing, ensuring that your pharmacy team's credentials are verified, trusted, and they're provider ready when that happens and we have payer opportunities out there. So we'll put the link to pharmacy profiles in there, which as you mentioned, is a free service where people are able to enroll in that now and then take that quick first step towards credentialing.

I hope for our listeners today, I know we're all thinking every day all the time that independent pharmacy is really at a turning point. And for me, when I have these conversations and I hear about what's happening, it provides a lot of hope and it provides the opportunity to [00:36:00] really take control of the destiny of independent pharmacy, which isn't something we can do in all areas, but I think these are two areas that really can help us scale our practice and change our practice and we know that the future isn't just about filling prescriptions, but it's about delivering care, building trust, and creating new opportunities for your business. But in your community and being nimble and having that community-based care, which I think is what's so exciting. So take that first step and invest in your team and claim your place in provider networks and get engaged in residencies or student programs out there. But keep proving what independents have always known that when we lead with care, we lead the future.

I'm Suzanne Feeney, Senior Director of Health Mart Pharmacy Solutions on the McKesson Health Mart team. Until next time, keep growing, keep leading, and keep serving your community.

Pharmacy Profiles is a vendor of Strategic Health Alliance II Inc., an affiliate of Health Mart. Subscribe to Independent Insights wherever you listen to podcasts. New [00:37:00] episodes are released weekly Together let's make a lasting impact and shape the future of pharmacy.