Pharmacy Manager, Formulary Development
Premera Blue Cross
Bothell, Washington
John has managed the formulary process at Premera Blue Cross since 2000. His responsibilities include health technology assessment, formulary process development, formulary reviews, clinical guidelines development and medical policy review. He also provides drug information support to medical and case management staff. John is Clinical Professor of Pharmacy at the University of Washington, where he teaches medical literature evaluation methods. His areas of interest include health policy, health technology assessment and application of evidence-based medicine, personalized medicine, economics and bioethics to formulary and coverage decision making processes.
After graduating from the University of Washington and working as a community pharmacist, John served as a hospital pharmacy director, medical supplies director and pharmacology instructor for 7 years in Kathmandu, Nepal. He completed a combined MPH degree in Pharmacy and Health Services at the University of Washington (1993) with a residency at Group Health Cooperative, where he later worked as a clinical and drug information pharmacist. Before coming to Premera, he was an Associate Pharmacy Director at Regence BlueShield. He is board certified in pharmacotherapy, and has a PharmD, also from the University of Washington. He is a member of the ISPOR Board of Directors, the AMCP Format Executive Committee, the ISPOR North American HTA Roundtable and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Medical Advisory Panel.
John’s interest in formulary systems goes back to Nepal, where he established the first formal P&T committee and developed a combined formulary and drug procurement system serving 30 projects under two separate NGOs. It was there that he first became interested in the problem of managing scarce resources to maximize the value of pharmacotherapy at the patient level.
Wednesday, March 27
2:45 PM – 4:00 PM