Kathryn Dorward King

Kathryn's Story

Dr. Dorward currently works for Greater Rochester Independent Practice Association (GRIPA) and ElderONE as an ambulatory care pharmacist, focusing on geriatrics and internal medicine. Through her work at ElderONE she has redesigned medication reconciliation, aided in EMR implementation and developed cost containment strategies. Before attending pharmacy school, Dr. Dorward graduated from Hobart and William Smith Colleges with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry, with a concentration in biochemistry. She then went on to receive her Pharm.D. from St. John Fisher College's Wegmans School of Pharmacy in 2011 and completed her PGY-1 residency at St. Joseph's hospital in Syracuse, New York. Dr. Dorward is a member of the Section Advisory Group on Pain Management and Palliative Care.

Facility

GRIPA, a part of Rochester Regional Health, provides care management services to rising risk and high risk patients by having a collaborative team approach that includes nursing, social work and pharmacists to improve quality measures and reduce health care costs. Dr. Dorward splits her time between GRIPA and ElderONE, a PACE (Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly) program. Here, she works directly with providers to optimize medication regimens, identify cost saving opportunities and helps with pharmacy-centric operations.

Recent Significant Projects

 Dr. Dorward is involved with an opioid pilot between GRIPA and a local insurer to identify patients on high-dose opioid medications in order to collaborate with the primary care physician to determine if there is room to optimize the patient's regimen for better pain control while reducing the total morphine milligram equivalents. This is a multidisciplinary approach including physician specialists, behavioral health and pharmacy.

At ElderONE, Dr. Dorward has learned how Medicare Part D applies to PACE programs which allowed her to implement cost saving initiatives that have saved an estimated $100,000 annually in addition to helping with contract negotiations with vendor pharmacies. She recently redesigned the warfarin monitoring program that allowed it to be moved from a paper-based system to the electronic medical record. She implemented a medication reconciliation program on all new enrollees in order to reduce medication errors and improve patient care.

Initial Involvement in ASHP

 "I never knew about pharmacy until I started doing research on Vioxx. I have now been a pharmacist for seven years and between my time as a student and practicing, I can say that I have loved every area of it. I joined ASHP because it is full of pharmacists with the same passion and drive to advance our profession."

Advice for Someone New to Specialty Area

"Never be afraid to propose a new program, initiative or way of doing things. The worst thing that could happen, is somebody tells you ‘no,’ but without that risk you’ll never know what great things can happen if you hear ‘yes.’"

Value of ASHP

"It is full of numerous different resources: continued education programs, communities where you can bounce ideas off one another or receive help and board certification support." 

"Working to obtain provider designation by CMS, helping to identify and manage drug shortages, providing news updates with a pharmacy focus to allow us to be in the "know" without needing to spend hours reading."