Anyone in specialty pharmacy?

[mj739]

I see a lot of threads about retail/hospital jobs but couldn't find one about specialty pharmacy.
Is anyone working in specialty pharmacy?
It'd be great if you can share any information on this topic!

 

[KidPharmD]

I did it for 4 years as an intern, and we did pretty much what the pharmacists did. What do you want to know? It really can vary from a lot of patient conversations, to almost to patient contact whatsoever. Its usually a desk/cubical job unless you are a production pharmacist. (Friends said it was pretty boring... look in box "yep, that's rebif, next..."

 

[TLAD123]

We have a pharmacist at our health system that is becoming our specialty meds pharmacist. She will be in charge of managing contracts and supply when our overarching system gets their act together with how they want to proceed with specialty meds (UHC) - this in addition to her current responsibilities as an HIV pharmacist.

 

[babyapple]

I did my APPE in a specialty pharmacy, mostly doing oncology drugs, love it. basically, it's like a close-door pharmacy, but I talked a lot with patients on the phone.

 

[mj739]

Thank you guys for the replies!
Are they supposed to be doing a lot of PAs? Pharmacists at this specialty pharmacy I went to the other day spent most of the day inputting clinical info in their system based on the documents they get from MD's office and filed Prior auth forms to be faxed to the insurance company. I thought PAs were supposed to be done by MD's office?
Specialty pharmacy I expected was something like "babyapple" described..

 

[radio frequency]

I am also very curious about specialty pharmacy. Based on what I can tell, it would fit my skill set very well. I haven't ever met a specialty pharmacist, however! How do you get into these gigs/find out more?

 

[babyapple]

I know they all got the job because who knows who. If I would rate my job preference: specialty pharmacy > compounding pharmacy > retail > hospital, only based on my rotation experience.