A few weeks ago, I was in San Antonio presenting at BEAT AIDS’ staff meeting about the in-house pharmacy and how 340B savings support client services. Earlier that same week, I worked with our onsite pharmacist to identify clients running low on their HIV medication, coordinated with the clinic team on insurance issues for another client, and helped operationalize a new outreach workflow for their upcoming Pride event.
Looking back, that week felt like a pretty good encapsulation of what we strive for with Account Management at Alchemy.
When people hear “account management,” they usually picture a few check-in calls, a quarterly review, and someone available over email when issues come up. At Alchemy the role is much more operational and embedded in the day-to-day work of the clinic. The Strategy & Operations team sits at the intersection of pharmacy operations, patient engagement, program growth, finance, compliance, and clinical coordination. Clinic leadership is focused on access and community impact. Pharmacists are focused on medication workflows and patient safety. Finance teams are thinking about reimbursement and sustainability. A large part of my role is helping coordinate all of those moving pieces so the pharmacy program helps the organization succeed.
Being in-person with the BEAT AIDS team is inspiring – their resilience, innovation, and scrappiness are qualities I try to mirror in our partnership. After the staff meeting, the HIV clinic director and I worked to help a client navigate insurance enrollment to ensure their access to care and medication. It’s exciting how a small operational change can help a client maintain reliable access to care and medication.
The next day, the pharmacist and I worked to identify HIV positive clients at risk of running low on their medication. I partner closely with our onsite pharmacist each day. I identify trends in adherence data, identify clients who may need outreach, and coordinate with the clinic team around next steps. At BEAT AIDS, our pharmacist knows many of the clients who use the pharmacy by name. She has a deep understanding of how to navigate PBMs, prior authorizations, coverage issues–all the edge cases that come up constantly in HIV care. For many, she becomes one of the people clients trust most.
The same week, I helped operationalize a new outreach workflow tied to an upcoming Pride event in the city. BEAT AIDS approached me with an idea; the goal: make it dramatically easier for those who visit the outreach tent to move quickly into PrEP care. The initial framing was essentially, “what’s the closest we can get to filling prescriptions out of a tent, while being operationally compliant?”
What followed became a large coordination effort between BEAT AIDS leadership, compliance, and the pharmacy team. The combination of a “let’s figure out how to make it work” mentality and a deep commitment to client safety led me to build a clear workflow. Outreach staff, providers, insurance verification, and the pharmacy were organized into an accelerated intake and treatment process designed to reduce the amount of friction between initial outreach and getting someone connected to care.
Each week, I meet to discuss new opportunities with the leadership team of BEAT AIDS: the Executive Director, the COO, grants director, and the directors of the HIV prevention and treatment clinic teams. Our conversations cover growth trends, client insurance enrollment, barriers to medication access, outreach initiatives, operational bottlenecks, broader policy updates, and pharmacy financial performance. My role requires me to understand the operational details to know when to pull in finance, compliance, or pharmacy operations to design and implement a new initiative.
Looking at my site visit with BEAT AIDS, what stands out most to me is how interconnected the work is. Conversations about adherence connect to insurance enrollment. Outreach initiatives connect to pharmacy operations and compliance. The financial sustainability of the pharmacy connects directly back to the clinic’s ability to expand services for clients.
That’s what makes being a part of these partnerships at Alchemy so rewarding. I get to work alongside incredible organizations like BEAT AIDS every day and leverage my unique background and skillset to help build systems, solve problems, and create a pharmacy program that moves us one step closer to eliminating HIV for good.
