Thirty-five years That's how long Alan George Bayham, President and Founder of Bayham Consulting, LLC, has been a registered pharmacist. A lot has changed since that January in 1976.
When Alan started his pharmacy career in the early 70's, there were no computers. "We used a manual typewriter, inserting a single prescription label at a time, using White Out if we made a mistake. Heck, we thought that we moved into the big time when we got an IBM electric typewriter with auto-erase." And forget about big designer drugs marketed on television. He recalls, “one of our biggest sellers back then were tablets made from digitalis leaves. We also made many of our OTC (over-the-counter or medicines that don't require a prescription) medications ourselves like goose grease and honey.”
Mr. Bayham completed his Pharmacy Training at Xavier University of Louisiana, College of Pharmacy - passing his Pharmacy Board Examination in January, 1976. Alan studied courses that today's pharmacy students have never heard of. "Pharmacognsy was the study of how drugs were obtained from plants," recalls Mr. Bayham. "We also studied Inorganic and Organic Pharmaceutical Products." Back then, pharmacy was more of an art than a science. "We would have to roll our own capsules, press tablets, make powder papers, compound syrups, elixirs, creams and ointments." Mr. Bayham remembers how points would be deducted if a prescription label was put on crooked or if there were fingerprints on the capsules he rolled.
Later on, Alan earned his Masters Degree in Business (Organizational Management) from the University of Phoenix in April 2001 with a perfect 4.0 GPA and scoring in the top 1% of the country in the Post-Curriculum Comprehensive Cognitive Assessment Exam
Today, Mr. Bayham helps clients, health plans, physician groups, and employers manage their prescription drug benefits for their patients and members all across the United States - “from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Atlantic Ocean to the West Coast,” he states proudly.
And instead of using a manual typewriter, he now uses the latest technology. He carries with him an IPad that he uses to have live meetings with clients and associates over the Internet. It also gives him instant access to clients' formularies and clinical drug information.
An important technological advantage that Managed Care members, patients who are part of a health plan, have that ordinary patients don't have is that all their prescriptions are processed through one central processor. That means that if a patient sees an emergency room physician and gets a prescription filled, say at a 24-hour chain pharmacy, in Chicago that could interact with another medication that was prescribed by their primary care physician and filled at their local, independent pharmacy in New Orleans; then the pharmacists will be alerted to this interaction before the patient even gets the new prescription.
Mr. Bayham recalls, “I remember when an emergency room physician called me to thank me. He had prescribed an antibiotic for an elderly patient with pneumonia. Although his examination showed no heart problems, when the local pharmacist processed the prescription through the central processor, it triggered an alert. The antibiotic had a side effect of increasing part of patients' heartbeat. This is not a problem with patients with a normal heart rhythm. However, the central processor automatically checks all prescriptions against all other prescriptions the patient is taking. This patient was taking a drug to regulate his heart rate. It immediately triggered an alert to the pharmacist, who then called the emergency room physician. The ER doctor changed the prescription over the phone with the pharmacist, thus preventing a possible drug interaction. It seems that the elderly patient forgot that he was taking that particular heart medicine, but because all his prescriptions are processed through a single processor the potential interaction was caught and prevented”
Alan Bayham has been recognized nationally as "Managed Care Pharmacy Manager of the Year" and as a "Visionary" by the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacists. In 2006, Standard and Poor inducted him into the Society of Industry Leaders.
When Hurricane Gustav threatened Louisiana, Governor Bobby Jindal wanted to ensure that Louisianians would be able to get an emergency supply of their prescription medications – especially the elderly and disabled, who would be the first to evacuate. So Gov. Jindal called on Louisiana Health Care Review, the organization contracted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to ensure the quality of health and safety for Medicare beneficiaries within the state of Louisiana. They called Alan Bayham.
"Pharmacy has been good to me," he exclaims. And it appears that Mr. Bayham has been good to pharmacy. He has moved from helping one patient with one prescription at a time to instantaneously helping hundreds of thousands of patients all across the country.
Mr. Bayham can be reached at:
Bayham Consulting, LLC Corporate Headquarters, 300 Coquille Lane, Madisonville, LA 70447
Operations Center, 3445 N. Causeway Blvd, Suite 301A, Metairie, LA 70002
866-202-4261, ext 987
AGBayham@BayhamConsulting.com
www.BayhamConsulting.com
