Parata Systems is excited to announce the expansion of the Company’s leadership team through the addition of two pharmacy and health technology industry leaders. The additions of Karen Thomas-Smith, appointed as the Company’s new Senior Vice President of Marketing, and Michael Young, R.Ph , in the role of Vice President of Pharmacy Strategy, bring a wealth of learnings that will allow Parata to expand on its comprehensive customer support. Recent professional achievements for Thomas-Smith at 3M and Optum, along with Young’s pharmacy leadership at Ascension and Banner Health provide additional real-world experience to deliver meaningful solutions for healthcare organizations.
Supporting the broad spectrum of pharmacy, including the retail, long-term care, and health system settings, is critical to improving the lives of patients and continually finding greater efficiencies in how medication is delivered. With this expansion of leadership, Parata seeks to further act as a resource to support pharmacy excellence while continuing to bring useful and impactful innovation to meet the needs of its customers.
“Pharmacy is an incredibly challenging industry that has only experienced more pressure across its unique constituents in the last two years. We are privileged to be a pillar of support for both new and existing challenges,” shared Rob Kill, Parata’s Chief Executive Officer. “More importantly, our customer partners who are sharing these innovations are helping achieve their unique clinical and business goals. It became imperative for our organization to identify and welcome two talented and experienced individuals to help Parata navigate its explosive growth across all pharmacy segments.”
“After 36 years of being both a pharmacist and in organizational leadership roles, joining Parata provides me the unique opportunity to engage with our pharmacy customers and navigate the nuanced challenges unique to each of them. We especially look forward to solving roadblocks specific to burnout as a result of workforce shortages stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Michael Young, VP Pharmacy Strategy at Parata. “When I was a customer of Parata, what struck me most was the willingness for the organization to listen to our needs – which I hope continues and drives us to be even better partners through our delivery of exceptional service and innovation in the years ahead.”
“What drew me to Parata were all of the customer successes that the Company is involved with on a daily basis,” shared Karen Thomas-Smith, Senior VP of Marketing at Parata. “That organizational satisfaction was evident through the abundance of customer stories that showed the direct impact that the right pharmacy technology can have on patient lives – not only through enhanced safety and medication management, but by providing pharmacists with more time to focus on quality care for their patients. I’m excited about telling these stories to showcase Parata’s role in driving improved healthcare and enabling pharmacy teams to practice at the top of their licenses.”