Joanie MacIntosh, CPhT
Purchasing Manager
McKesson Medication Management

Role
The pharmacy purchasing position can be an excellent career path for technicians to advance in the healthcare field.  It requires intricate knowledge of various drugs and their numerous methods of delivery routes.  A business background is helpful in understanding and executing contracts that may require special attention to market share, contact compliance and manufacturer unable to supply clauses. The Purchasing Position brings a new set of challenges, and the personnel in this position are considered a vital part of the management team.

Some of Joanie’s duties include:

• Implement and monitor standardized purchasing guidelines for maximizing inventory management at McKesson Medication Management sites
• Communicate purchasing initiatives to all sites in a timely manner and provide analysis of purchasing initiatives by site.
• Liaison with local pharmaceutical wholesalers for communication of product needs and site support.
• Identify, monitor, and quantify wholesaler outages, etc. for their impact to sites.
• Audit pricing to ensure sites are paying the appropriate price to the wholesalers pursuant to the group purchasing organization’s (GPO) pharmaceutical contracts.
• Training of purchasing personnel at sites to support and assist them with the intricacies of the job.

How They Got There
Joanie felt she was very fortunate when she was hired as a pharmacy technician at Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City, UT.  When she began her career, technicians were being trained on the job. There were very few technician-training programs available in 1978. 

Her career began as a staff technician and as she moved to other institutions, she gained work experiences that included working in centralized and de-centralized pharmacy settings. She also has worked extensively with IV admixture programs, oncology preparations, routine pharmacy billing, implementations of different hospital information systems, an implementation of an operating room satellite pharmacy, narcotic control areas, and automated dispensing cabinets.  All of this experience led to earning the privilege to work as a pharmacy buyer, which ultimately led to her current Purchasing Manager position.

Joanie also credits many mentors in her career.  These mentors include many pharmacists that taught her their pharmacy knowledge and directors of pharmacy that trusted her to make the correct choices with their drug budget.

Other Professional Activities
Joanie is active with a local network of pharmacy buyers.  This group meets to discuss current challenges the buyers are experiencing in her hometown. 

Advanced Training
Joanie earned her National Pharmacy Technician Certification in 1995.  She is licensed in the state of Nevada.

Advice
Pharmacy purchasing is about more than the drug spend and financial implications.  It is about obtaining the correct drug required to help treat the patient.  It is important to make purchasing judgments not only based on contract expectations but   also to use appropriate clinical judgment as well. A buyer can be instrumental to the director of pharmacy relative to managing the drug budget and should be keeping the director up to date with purchases through out the month.