Colonel J. Michael Spilker                    

    

Pharmacy colleagues,

Summer has arrived!  I hope that you and your family have a safe and enjoyable season.  I am excited to report that our officer recruiting is having the best year in recent history and our overall staffing is nearing 100%.  Many of your efforts have resulted in increased interest from pharmacists in an Air Force career.  I was exceptionally proud of our participation at the APHA meeting in Washington DC.  In conjunction with the recruiting service, the Air Force Pharmacy booth had several pharmacy officers talking with candidates who expressed an interest.  The area was crowded by those that were drawn to your professional image and the idea of serving their country.  By the end of the conference, we had over 300 requests for additional information about an Air Force career.  My most sincere thanks go out to those who took time out of your conference schedule to work the booth and a special thanks to our recruiting service colleagues and Captain Lusk for organizing the effort. 

Our efforts at recruiting are closely aligned with our initiative to provide each officer with a mentor.  Thanks to the many officers that ensured our HPSP students have an active duty pharmacy officer to answer their questions while they were in school and assist with transitioning to their first assignment.  Positive comments abound from these new officers regarding how helpful this was and how it remains valuable as they transition to active duty.  Expansion of our mentorship program to all other pharmacy officers will continue to be one of my core interests.  I encourage each of you to forward any ideas for expanding and improving our mentoring program to your flight and MAJCOM pharmacy leadership.  An article I recently read reported that the reason people withhold ideas is a sense of futility rather than a fear of retribution.  Although progress towards our pharmacy goals can seem slow at times, I assure you that our goal is to keep Air Force pharmacy practice on the profession’s cutting edge.  Our patients deserve the best and we will deliver that service to them.

                Deployed pharmacy operations remain a vitally important concern of mine and I’m scheduled to visit pharmacies in the AOR this summer.  I receive reports from deployed personnel and regularly learn about the improvements being made with each successive rotation. I applaud your efforts and remain convinced that each deployed pharmacy should have a combination of a pharmacy officer and technician to deliver pharmacy services.  The readiness SIG is developing a process to collect feedback from those that are returning from deployment so that we can incorporate their suggestions into our training for future pharmacy personnel. 

I receive questions frequently about the approaching TJC deadline for pharmacist review of all medication orders prior to dispensing.  We all realize that many of our pharmacies do not yet have sufficient pharmacist manning to accomplish this requirement 100% of the time on all new and refill prescriptions.  Each of you should review and adhere to the protocol that was developed for interim compliance and review all high alert medications as well as concentrate on review of all new civilian and MTF prescription orders. Recently, DoD pharmacy leadership met with TJC representatives to request an extension of the deadline for full compliance as well as clarification of several items in the original agreement.  Our formal request will be submitted to TJC in mid June and we expect an answer shortly after that time.  I know your top priority remains the safe delivery of pharmacy services to each of your customers.

Recently, I attended the BSC Development Team meeting and want to pass along a few thoughts on career development.  First, once you have been promoted to a new rank, finish your PME within the first year after pin on.  Especially if you want to be competitive for a BSC Executive position, you should get your PME done in this time frame.  Second, when Associate Chiefs review your desires for your future career track, we are reviewing the input from you and your commander via the ADP at the AFPC website.  If you have current information and narratives in your record it is a great help to us.  If your input is not current, we have little way of producing a meaningful vector for your future.  You and your commander should update this information each year.  Finally, if you have not had a lot of experience writing OPRs or medal packages, seek out a peer or mentor that can assist you.  The art of turning your many amazing accomplishments into an OPR bullet with impact is a learned talent.  I still am very grateful to Colonel (ret) Ray Wilkins who took the time to teach all of his officers how to acquire and develop this skill.  We have many pharmacy officers who have well developed writing skills and I know they are willing to help you develop yours as well.

As good stewards of tax payer dollars, we must optimize our use of contract medications and vigorously utilize the best pharm reports to purchase medications from the most cost effective source.  To track our progress, we have started collecting and analyzing contract compliance of each MTF in an effort to identify those pharmacies that are doing exceptionally well in compliance so that they might assist those locations that are not doing as well.  The Air Force Audit Agency is currently looking at our progress in this regard as well.  Our goal is 100% compliance with all contract medications at every facility when those contract items are available from the contracted source.  In addition, I want to identify to our DSCP partners those contracted pharmaceuticals that are frequently not available and require us to purchase a non-contract item in order that our patients have their medications.  I know that if we work together, we will reach our goal.

In closing, it is an honor and a privilege to serve as your Associate Corps Chief and your representative on pharmacy issues to the Air Force Surgeon general.  I want to thank each member of our Air Force pharmacy family…pharmacists, technicians, and volunteers that work hard each day to make the MTF pharmacy the preferred point of service for all our beneficiaries. 

 

Updated July 2010