Leading Effective Optimization in Health System Industry

Kevin Mahler is the Assistant Director- Medication Safety, Pharmacy Automation, Regulatory Compliance, and Diversion at The University of Kansas Health System. His journey in the health system industry started as a resident at the University of Kansas Health System and has continued as Assistant Director at the same University. Passionate about optimizing the automated platform at the health system, he shared his expert insight and valuable thoughts for the 2025 edition of Healthcare Business Review.

Journey in Health System Industry

My journey started as a resident at The University of Kansas Health System. I completed the Health System Pharmacy Administration program in 2018 and was fortunate to stay on as an Inpatient Operations Manager at the main campus, where I oversaw all operations except compounding.  I was entrenched in the various distribution workflows of getting medications to patients. During that time, I was also responsible for the automation platform at the health system, where I discovered a passion for optimizing that system. This helped in providing the safest end-user experience from controlled substance handling to safe training practices to safe automation practices. 

In 2021, the department completed some restructuring, and with some additional growth, there was a justification to solely focus on the pharmacy automation technology.  I had to build that team from the ground up.  At that time, the team helped with implementations, worked collaboratively with the medication safety and drug diversion teams, worked with local site leaders and began to build the required infrastructure for a continuously growing health system.  In 2023, I moved into an Interim Director role over the Shared Services Team (Pharmacy Automation, Drug Diversion, Regulatory Compliance, and Medication Safety) and served in that role for three months before moving into an Assistant Director role over those areas. 

Addressing Challenges through Collaboration

The pharmacy department at the health system has a phenomenal culture of reporting medication errors and opportunities to maximize the safety throughout the medication management process.  The culture-layered huddle structure and strong medication safety team presence with the local teams ensure that helpful information gets to the right groups to take meaningful action.  The pharmacy department does an excellent job of collaborating across professions to find sustainable solutions to problems that arise. Innovative solutions are also encouraged through leveraging existing and emerging technologies to help create sustainable solutions.

Establishing Effective Governance

The health system has had rapid growth over the past three years.  Adding multiple hospitals to the system has highlighted the need for standard care alignment.  As a pharmacy department, governance creation has helped in building the infrastructure to better address the patient needs and ensure consistent care at every location. The creation of governance structures has also helped to create environments where leaders throughout the organization can come together to address the growing and evolving needs of our patients.

Incorporating Feedbacks to Enhance Patient Satisfaction

We support the local operation, as a Shared Services Team. Usually, the local teams are provided with the feedback and will look for collaboration with the shared services teams when applicable. There have been instances where patient feedback has been incredibly impactful in making the patient experience stronger.  I would say that the shared services teams typically make the most impact in supporting the nursing, pharmacy, and anesthesia teams.  By doing so, they can focus on their patients, which typically leads to a better patient experience. 

Leading the Team with Autonomy

One of the biggest things you can do as a leader is to give your team autonomy.  I believe giving the team autonomy and space to be creative is important in our current healthcare environment.  As a technology nerd, I encourage my teams to think about how the current technology can be optimized, and I encourage them to find modern technology on the market that can help in a given situation.  A lot of attention is placed on artificial intelligence for good reason, but there is sophisticated technology on the market today that can be leveraged to create unique and innovative solutions to the medication management process. The other key to this strategy is being able to remove barriers to obtain the technology for the teams and assist with the change management solution.

Essential Leadership Quality

An advice I would give to other healthcare leaders who are looking to drive meaningful change and set new standards in the industry is persistence and resilience. It appears cliché, but it is the truth. The healthcare environment is typically slower to adopt newer technologies.  I am also extremely fortunate because I have leaders above me in the organization who are innovative, supportive of our vision, and comfortable with challenging the status quo. This led my organization to get buy-in and proof of concept acceptance on various new technologies that have made our operations significantly safer.  Gaining upper-level management support of your vision is mission-critical to driving meaningful change.