Holly Phillips

Holly’s Story

Holly Phillips, Pharm.D., is the Acute Care Pharmacy Manager at the University of Colorado Hospital (UCH). She has also served as the PGY1 Pharmacy Residency Program Director since 2004. She received her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Texas College of Pharmacy, and she completed an ASHP-accredited PGY1 residency at the University of Colorado Hospital. Holly serves as a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Prior to her current position, she served as the Multidisciplinary Project Coordinator at UCH for 9 years, focusing on process improvement between the departments of pharmacy and nursing with an emphasis on communication issues and technology implications on the medication management system.

Facility

The University of Colorado Hospital is an academic medical center and part of the University of Colorado Health System. The hospital employees roughly 5,200 employees and has 551 license patient care beds. They have over 26,000 annual admission and approximately 800,000 clinic visits annually.

Significant Projects

One of the projects that Holly’s inpatient pharmacy has been focused on in the last year is improving efforts towards patient education and HCAHP scores related to patients’ knowledge of medication. In the last year, the clinical pharmacists have dramatically increased the number of patients they have reached with education. Additionally, they have also started to heavily utilize their extenders (residents, students, interns) in an effort to reach more patients. They feel that having a pharmacist directly interact with a patient or a care giver is an important step in ensuring the safe transition for that patient to the outpatient setting. Additionally, they hope it will contribute to reduced readmissions. They are excited to say that they have seen a statistically significant improvement in the HCAHP composite score related to knowledge of medication, and they hope to see that trend continue.

Advice for Someone New to Your Specialty Area

“My advice to someone new to being a manager would be to make sure you always keep your employees’ best interests in mind. No matter how difficult a conversation may be with an employee, I always approach it with this attitude. People are by far the most valuable resources within a department, and it is critically important to be their advocate and hear their voices. That doesn’t always mean that they will “win,” but I feel that difficult transitions or changes are often made much easier by involving people in the decision making process. People want to be heard and respected, and often their ideas are the ones that end up working best.”

Involvement in ASHP

I became involved in ASHP for many reasons but primarily because I believe in the power of networking and sharing great ideas. There are so many innovative and creative things being done in our profession, and ASHP provides a platform for us to share those ideas and empower one another to make positive changes to our profession.

ASHP’s Value to Members

“The benefit of ASHP is clear once you become an active member. I have been able to successfully network with many colleagues around the country and develop relationships that I utilize often. ASHP has allowed me to develop my own personal leadership skills though opportunities to present posters, develop platform presentations, organize webinars, contribute to the literature, and be actively engaged in committee activities that directly promote and benefit our profession.”