What a pharmacy informatics consultant does

The short version

I am Brian Tapley, PharmD. Organizations hire me as a pharmacy informatics consultant when medication data and the clinical story have come apart. The same work is what I mean by clinical informatics pharmacist consultant: a licensed pharmacist in the room when analysts and engineers need a definition, not another chart pasted over a guess.

I am licensed in Colorado, Florida, Kansas, and Oklahoma, and I work from Colorado Springs. Since 2020 I have been a pharmacy subject matter expert for the Colorado Department of Corrections. There I translate clinical needs into data definitions that analysts and engineers can build on, and I sit with Tableau teams when the view has to match how pharmacy talks about the work. Before that I was a Walgreens pharmacy manager.

JQ GROW LLC books this consulting at $250 per hour. It is scheduled time with me, not the educational chat elsewhere on this site.

What the work actually is

A pharmacy informatics consultant stands between the people who practice pharmacy and the people who model it. Pharmacists talk about orders, verifications, dispenses, administrations, holds, and why a dose was late. Analysts and engineers talk about tables, fields, and filters. Both sides can be careful and still miss each other. The miss is usually a word each side thinks it already defined.

The useful product is a clinical data definition: a short statement of what a number means, written so pharmacy can defend it and a builder can implement it. What event counts. What time window counts. What is excluded, and why a pharmacist would exclude it. How a medication is recognized when the name in one system and the code in another do not line up. What a Tableau workbook should show, footnote, or leave off.

I am not there to take the analyst’s job or to own the extract. I am there so the clinical part is written by someone who has practiced pharmacy. When that sentence is missing, the project is a reasonable guess with cleaner formatting.

When an organization needs one

The request usually shows up after one of three problems has already cost people time. None of them needs a villain. Each one needs a shared definition that was never written down.

The first is messy medication data. One drug shows up under several names. An order, a dispense, and an administration get counted as the same event. “Patients on this medication” changes with the extract. Without a written rule, each analyst makes a sensible choice, and the choices do not agree.

The second is a dashboard nobody trusts. Pharmacy says the workbook is not how the work happens. The data team says the view matches the source they were given. Both can be right. The meeting then argues about the chart instead of the decision. Hire a pharmacy informatics consultant when the fight is about meaning. If the extract failed to run, you need the people who run extracts.

The third is a clinical definition lost between pharmacy and IT. A real pharmacy question reaches a Tableau team as whichever field was easiest to match. “High-alert medication” becomes a list in a ticket. “On therapy” becomes any recent row. The workbook ships, pharmacy stops opening it, and the next request starts over because nobody wrote down the decision.

You need this help when one of those problems blocks a real decision: staffing, what a committee will see, how a policy will be watched, or whether two departments count the same thing. If the argument is about capacity or tools, say that on the hire form.

How I work

I start with the decision, not the chart. I ask what someone will do differently if the number is high, low, or missing. If nobody can answer, we are not ready to define a metric, and I will say that in the first conversation.

Then I sit with the people who live with the number and the people who will build it. Pharmacy brings the edge cases: ordered and never given, a medication that changed names, a hold that looks like therapy if you only read the order. Analysts and engineers say what the source can support. I write definitions both sides can point to after the meeting.

With a Tableau team that becomes concrete. Which mark is a patient, an order, or a day. What a filter drops without saying so. What the title promises compared with the grain of the data. Part of the work is choosing what to show, what to footnote, and what to leave out.

I learned the habit as pharmacy subject matter expert at the Colorado Department of Corrections since 2020: take a clinical need, write the data definition, and stay with analysts and engineers until they do not have to invent the clinical part. The Walgreens years are why a conference-room definition is not finished. Someone still covers the shift that definition describes.

The rate is $250 per hour. Use the hire form with a rough hour estimate. I confirm scope before any work is booked, and the form does not charge a card.

Where 340B depends on the definition

The same gap shows up in the 340B Drug Pricing Program. I have worked on 340B compliance and audit readiness, on tracking eligible and qualifying purchases, and on contract pharmacy setup. An audit asks whether a purchase was eligible: which patient, which location, which relationship to the covered entity, and which record shows it.

If those words are loose, eligibility tracking drifts. A contract pharmacy setup can look finished while that question is still open. I write the definition with the people who run the program, then the tracking can follow it. I do not publish audit scores.

What I will not pretend

I will not call a definition settled while pharmacy and the data team still mean different things by the same word. I will not add a metric because a slide looks empty. If the data cannot support the question, I will say so, and I will say what would have to be true before it can be answered.

The educational chat on this website is a separate product. It is not a consult with me, and it is not medical advice. Hiring me is a business conversation about data definitions and Tableau. It is not a request to direct anyone’s therapy. I also do not publish other organizations’ results. If you want a scored case study, I do not have one to offer.

If this is the gap you have

If medication data is messy, if a dashboard is up and nobody trusts it, or if the clinical definition was lost between pharmacy and IT, use the hire form. Tell me the decision you are trying to support. I will say whether a pharmacy informatics consultant is the right use of the hours, and what I would want defined first.

I am Brian Tapley, PharmD, a clinical informatics pharmacist consultant licensed in Colorado, Florida, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Consulting with me is $250 per hour. It is live time with a pharmacist, not a subscription and not a chatbot.