Michael Jakubecz

Michael’s Story

Michael Jakubecz received his Bachelor's Degree in Pharmacy from the University of Toledo in 1986. He returned to the classroom in 1992 and received his MBA from Baldwin-Wallace University in 1994. He has practiced his entire career in larger acute care hospitals and for the past 23 years he has been the Director of Pharmacy at Cleveland Clinic Hillcrest Hospital. Mr. Jakubecz has been married for 27 years, and he has two grown children who are both work in health care. This past year Mr. Jakubecz's son graduated from Pharmacy School. This was significant because Mr. Jakubecz's father was a Pharmacist too. With his son's graduation from Pharmacy School, there are three generations of the Jakubecz family involved in the Pharmacy profession. Mr. Jakubecz is currently a member of the Section Advisory Group on Innovation Management.

Facility

Hillcrest Hospital is located on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio. It was founded in 1968 and became part of the Cleveland Clinic Health System in 1997. It is a 500-bed, non-teaching hospital with a level two trauma center and a level three neonatal intensive care unit. On a yearly basis, Hillcrest hospital sees over 80,000 patients in its emergency department, 20,000 in its outpatient oncology center, and births over 4500 babies. Since it was founded in 1968, it has grown from a 200-bed hospital to a 500-bed hospital and it has added cardiothoracic surgery, high risk perinatology, pediatrics, and OB/GYN oncology services to the institution.

Significant Projects

Our pharmacy department rolled out a high risk scoring tool in 2017. This tool predicts those patients at highest risk for readmission to the hospital. Each patient identified as a high risk patient, receives an admission and discharge medication reconciliation. We have worked hard at integrating this program into our daily workflow. As we finished 2017, we completed a continuous improvement project to review how we could integrate current clinical pharmacy services with our high risk scoring tool. In 2018, the Pharmacy will embark upon a completely new practice model to help the pharmacy staff improve its efficiencies in clinical practice.

Advice for Someone New to Your Specialty Area

"A career in hospital pharmacy can be very rewarding. It is a dynamic practice setting which allows an individual to grow personally and professionally. However, two things can have a significant impact on fulfilling your aspirations in a job. First, you should never assume your manager knows what you are interested in perusing professionally. You should always sit down with your boss, talk about your career goals, and set up a plan to help you attain your goal. Second, do not let what you perceive as deficiencies in your resume deter you from perusing your goal. Hard work, initiative, and desire go a long way to filling in gaps. Managers want to reward those individuals who perform at a high level every day."

Involvement in ASHP

"As I established myself professionally and determined Pharmacy Administration was my passion, I felt ASHP would be a great opportunity for me to network with fellow managers. They could help me grow and learn from their experiences, as I was navigating my new practice environment. In addition, I would be able to share my experiences with others and have a platform like management case studies or management pearls to share my successful pharmacy practice initiatives."

ASHP’s Value to Members

"All of us can benefit from professional guidance and assistance from others. Networking with other people in our profession can help us find better solutions to problems we face on a daily basis. In addition, involvement in organizational committees fosters development of new ideas, which provides us with innovative ways to expand the role of a pharmacist."

"ASHP provides a forum for individuals to voice their opinions on a variety of topics and from those opinions formulate a vision for our membership to use as guide for developing our profession."