Becker’s Healthcare Podcast – Episode Summary

Guest: Shawn Myers, Vice President of Pharmacy and Ancillary Clinical Services, Encompass Health
Host: Laura Deardo, Becker’s Healthcare
Release Date: January 17, 2026

Main Theme

This episode centers on the evolving role of pharmacy and ancillary clinical services in post-acute care, highlighting major patient safety initiatives, the challenges of scale and standardization across a large health system, and priorities for 2026. Shawn Myers shares insights into medication reconciliation improvements, regulatory compliance, virtual pharmacy optimization, and the unique opportunities and hurdles of rapid organizational growth.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Introduction & Background

• Shawn Myers’ Career Path (00:15–01:27)
  • Trained as a pharmacist (University of Georgia), moved into administration early, and has extensive hospital management experience.
  • Celebrating 10 years at Encompass Health, overseeing pharmacy and, more recently, respiratory therapy.

Major Initiative: Improving Medication Reconciliation

The Challenge:

• Transitional Care Context

  • Encompass Health handles patients post-acute event with an average length of stay ~13 days.
  • Unique window for in-depth medication education and error prevention compared to acute care.

• Data & Communication Challenges

  • Lack of interoperability between care sites, reliance on paper/electronic records, and discrepancies between different information sources.

The Solution:

• Medication Reconciliation Process Overhaul (01:41–07:22)
  • Implementation of a pharmacist-led patient medication interview within 48 hours of admission.
  • Cross-verifying meds between patients, discharge summaries, fill histories, and progress notes.
  • Creation and roll-out of an Admission Medication Reconciliation Checklist integrated into the EHR.

“We found so many things that would have otherwise been discrepancies or errors just by talking to the patient, sharing what was ordered for them, making sure nothing was omitted.”
— Shawn Myers (05:30)

• Results & Metrics
  • Early implementation shows a decline in serious medication errors.
  • Ongoing data collection to confirm long-term improvements.

Rolling Out Change Across the Organization

• Organizational Structure & Leadership (07:44–10:18)
  • Eight operating regions, each with a regional director of pharmacy as primary contact for implementation.
  • Multidisciplinary Pharmacy Leadership Board guides strategy.
  • Success driven by communication, regional director engagement, and transparency through performance metrics.
  • Strong IT support enables hospital-level reporting and feedback.

“If you have a way to create visibility through metrics... this is one example where it’s pretty easy to run a report on things like what percent of patients had the admission interview completed within 48 hours.”
— Shawn Myers (09:24)

2026 Priorities and Headwinds

Drug Supply Chain Security Act Compliance

• DSCSA Final Implementation (10:29–13:50)
  • Full serialization and electronic tracking of all drug transactions as of November 27, 2025.
  • Requires tight coordination with wholesalers, repackagers, third-party data vendors, and hospital staff workflow changes (e.g., scanning/validation).
  • Early rollout smoother than expected, but continued fine-tuning needed.

Virtual/Remote Pharmacy Optimization

• Increasing reliance on remote pharmacists, especially outside 24/7 onsite coverage.
• Project: Building a queryable database of local hospital drug interchange policies.
• Aim to reduce friction and errors for remote pharmacists processing orders across hospitals with variable protocols.

“It’s important for remote pharmacy to be aware of any of those kind of interchanges or processes while they’re doing order verification... Today it’s difficult.”
— Shawn Myers (14:24)

Biggest Challenges

Communication and Coordination

• Scaling Change and Consistency Across 170+ Hospitals (15:27–17:26)
  • Turning board-driven strategies into meaningful, hospital-level workflow is complex.
  • Frequent site visits reveal persistent communication gaps.
  • Myers stresses the need for ongoing improvement in information flow and ensuring expectations are clearly understood at all levels.

“It’s always, it’s important for me to go out and connect with the folks and talk to them about initiatives and get their feedback... For no other reason than communication is difficult.”
— Shawn Myers (16:40)

Looking Forward: Growth and Turnkey Solutions

• Rapid Expansion (17:52–19:49)
  • Encompass Health is opening 6–8 new hospitals annually.
  • Key challenge: onboarding and educating entirely new pharmacy teams.
  • Focus on making new hospital startups as “turnkey” as possible with robust systems, setup, and support to minimize the burden on new leaders.

“What can we do as an organization to make it as turnkey as possible?... What kind of back end things can we do in the beginning of a hospital setup so that... a new leader... has less independent decisions to have to make in an environment where it’s new to them.”
— Shawn Myers (19:00)

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the passion for patient safety:
  “I feel like I’ve been working on [medication reconciliation] the entire 10 years I’m here. And that has to do with medication reconciliation for our patients. It’s a patient safety driven initiative.” (01:41)

• On checklist efficacy:
  “The checklist idea was something that this team built. They did some piloting, the results were really good. And we have implemented that checklist into our EHR.” (06:30)

• On the role of metrics and transparency:
  “We can run [reports] at an individual hospital level and simply use that as feedback to the hospitals on what their performance is, where their opportunities are.” (09:40)

• On the hardest part of leading at scale:
  “I always find things that weren’t necessarily heard the same way that we thought it was told. And for no other reason than communication is difficult.” (16:40)

Important Segment Timestamps

• Background & Encompass Health overview: 00:15–01:27
• Medication Reconciliation Initiative: 01:41–07:22
• Checklist & Implementation Details: 04:45–07:22
• Organizational Rollout & Reporting: 07:44–10:18
• 2026 Priorities (DSCSA, Virtual Pharmacy): 10:29–15:04
• Biggest Challenges—Communication: 15:27–17:26
• Looking Forward – Growth & Turnkey Onboarding: 17:52–19:49

Tone & Style

Myers speaks candidly, focusing on patient safety, practical workflow improvements, and the realities of operating at scale. The dialogue is detail-rich, process-oriented, and imbued with both pride in past accomplishments and a pragmatic focus on upcoming challenges. The episode is solution-focused, with a strong thread of collaboration and continuous improvement throughout.