Matthew Pond

Matthew’s Story

Dr. Pond began his studies at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a Bachelor of Science with a double major in Biology and History and a minor in Chemistry. From there he completed his Masters of Business Administration and then his Doctor of Pharmacy degree from Campbell University, in Buies Creek, NC. Currently, Dr. Pond serves as a member of the Section Advisory Group on Multi-Hosptial Pharmacy Executives of ASHP, American College of Healthcare Executives, along with other professional committees and organizations.

Overview of Facility/Health System

MemorialCare Health System is a nonprofit integrated delivery system that includes five top hospitals with over 11,000 employees – Long Beach Memorial, Miller Children's & Women's Hospital Long Beach, Community Hospital Long Beach, Orange Coast Memorial, and Saddleback Memorial; medical groups – MemorialCare Medical Group and Greater Newport Physicians; health plans – Seaside Health Plan, ACOs, HMO, and PPOs, and numerous outpatient health centers, retail, infusion, specialty, imaging centers, surgery centers and dialysis centers throughout the Southland (Orange County and Los Angeles County).

Significant Projects 

Dr. Pond has been highly engaged in longitudinal teams and projects that enable health systems to move the pendulum of alignment from a fee for service volume model to a quality and value driven model and provides enhanced remuneration of our pharmacy services. As our hospital’s role has evolved into complex, yet individual component, of an Integrated Delivery Network we have undergone significant changes in alignment, structure, function and culture. It has been essential to start with the establishment a shared vision across our pharmacy service lines that aligns pharmacists and technicians to practice at the top of their license, leverages technology, gives fluidity to our workforce, and promulgates the flow of patients through all of the pharmacy touch points to improve our patient outcomes and patient experience, while striving to maintain a tight pharmacy ecosystem.

Advice for Someone New to Your Specialty Area

"Give time time. Rome wasn’t built in a day; but be intentional with learning all that you can about your people, your teams, your department, and the landscape of how decisions flow. Learn all you can about how your individual responsibility dovetails into the larger vision. All the while remembering, it took a tremendous amount of intelligence, sweat equity, and heavy lifting to get the organization/department to where they are currently. Respect that. Look left and look right. They are around you and they make look tired, they may say they are glad you are finally here – but it is because of their efforts that blazed the trail for you to be standing where you are today. Systems come and go – initiatives are born and die almost daily. Get your arms around the big picture and where the pharmacy enterprise should be going. Your value to your patients and to your team comes from your daily discipline of investing in yourself so that that you are in turn a better contributor and leader. Balance your department’s operational excellence with the investment into your team’s opportunity to grow and develop and soar. In turn the benefit multiplies many times back to the patient, to your organization and to you. Soon we will all forget le travail de jour – we will never forget the way someone inspired and invested in us."

Initial Involvement in ASHP

"Initially I became involved in ASHP primarily because it was the group of pharmacists to which my profession belonged and aligned. It was also my resource on the fly – if anyone had an article it was available at ASHP."

Value of ASHP

"After school when I started to practice, I realized then what a tremendous support to me, my profession and other colleagues ASHP was. It was a trove of information that I didn’t have to reinvent. Every year I feel ASHP resources become more robust and further tailored to help build the pharmacy enterprise and all of its moving parts. There is something there for everyone who practices within a health system. This is further nurtured and developed because of the opportunity for us to all be contributors. Not only do we take from the ASHP vaults, but we are positioned to give back and reinvest and help build into the lives and futures of others."

"ASHP is the catalyst at the center of our Pharmacy Enterprise that provides community, connection, education, development, opportunity to invest, and guidance to our profession."