Ask an Alumnus: Palak Desai, PharmD ’01

ASK AN ALUMNUS: Palak Desai, PharmD ’01

Vice President, Pharmacy Actuarial Analytics, Centene Corporation

Dr. Palak Desai has 20 years of experience encompassing clinical practice, academia, and managed care. After graduating from the UIC College of Pharmacy in 2001, she completed her pharmacy practice residency with an emphasis in cardiology at the Edward Hines, Jr., VA Hospital, where her published research led to change in clinical practice. Over the years, she has received awards and recognition for her leadership and practice.

Dr. Desai began her career at Mayo Clinic-Jacksonville as a cardiology clinical pharmacist serving on multiple local and national committees, including Medication Safety, Pharmacy and Therapeutics, Congestive Heart Failure, and the Mayo Clinic Foundation Cardiology Task Force. Thereafter, she returned to Illinois and shifted her career focus to managed care. After gaining pharmacy benefit management (PBM) experience at Caremark and Walgreens Health Initiatives, she served as assistance director for Illinois Medicaid Prior Authorization and clinical assistant professor at UIC. Following this, Dr. Desai held the director of pharmacy position for Illinois Medicaid and Medicare at WellCare

Health Plans where she had the opportunity to create and guide a bill impacting the opioid crisis into state legislation. During this time, she also served as the pharmacy chair for the Illinois Association of Medicaid Health Plans (IAMHP) and was featured in the “Who’s Who in Medicaid.”

In her current role as vice president of pharmacy actuarial analytics at Centene Corporation, Dr. Desai serves as the clinical leader within the actuarial organization, guiding financial initiatives related to medical and pharmacy spend across the organization and influencing the risk management of major developments in the industry, such as gene therapy and the COVID-19 vaccines.

Q: You’ve had success at several professional stops— how?

A: Each position I’ve held in the course of my career has been a stepping stone for the next. My philosophy has been to never stop learning, keep challenging myself, and never get too comfortable.

Q: What is actuarial analytics, and how does a pharmacist uniquely contribute to the work?

A: Actuarial analysts develop statistical models to analyze data in order to project future financial risks and manage financial uncertainty for a business. In the context of managed care, healthcare actuaries and clinicians collaborate to combine healthcare utilization data and clinical insight to predict the impact of future costs and trends. The pharmacist-actuary partnership is imperative in translating qualitative clinical information into quantitative data allowing more accurate and precise predictive modeling for future drug and drugrelated spending.

Q: What are you working on right now, and what have you learned from it?

A: Currently, I’m very excited to have the opportunity to work on public policy addressing the industry-wide financial and management risks posed by the emergence and expected exponential growth of cell and gene therapies over the next few years. With the unknown durability of these extremely high-cost, high-impact treatments, the financial sustainability within our current healthcare payment and delivery structure will be seriously challenged. By creating a solution through legislation that distributes risk appropriately, we can not only create a resilient financial model but also ensure equitable access to these groundbreaking therapies for the right patients at the right time.

A valuable lesson in this work has been to realize the importance of challenging the status quo and to continuously look for creative, innovative solutions.

Q: Has being a woman in leadership/pharmacy impacted you in any way?

A: As a woman of color, from the outset of my career, it was apparent that I would be held to a higher standard than many around me. I wouldn’t be where I am, who I am, and with the skills I have today without that additional challenge. I strived to always be well-read and well-informed. However, knowledge and expertise only get one so far. I developed my communication skills to be consistently articulate, clear, and direct. I also made it a point to observe successful female leaders around me and emulate their admirable qualities. Being a woman has shaped my leadership style to be more empathetic, inquisitive, curious, assertive, and open.

At the start of each day, four post-it notes affixed to my desk remind me to “be bold,” “be brave,” “be you,” and to “take chances.”

Q: Where do you see pharmacy/healthcare going in the years ahead, and what opportunities do you see for our current student pharmacists?

A: Long gone is the era where pharmacists were only seen in the dispensing role. While that still remains one function, the profession of pharmacy has evolved dramatically over the past couple of decades. It will continue to evolve beyond our imagination with the older range of Generation Z at the helm. With innovation, creativity, and independent thinking written in their DNA, Gen Z will create healthcare delivery models that meet patients where they are by expanding health literacy and equity. As one of the most trusted professions, pharmacists are uniquely positioned to significantly impact health equity at the front lines, at the population health level, and within the public policy arena. I’m very excited to see what’s next!

Q: Do you have advice for our current student pharmacists/pharmacists starting today?

A: In addition to some of the advice mentioned in my previous responses, periodically re-evaluate your purpose. I believe our purpose is dynamic, and we may have multiple purposes concurrently depending on the stage of our lives and careers. It’s important to stay in touch with our purpose(s) to ensure we don’t veer too far off course.

Remember, your title or salary doesn’t measure success. It’s measured by what is truly important to you. Align with your purpose, commit to your passion, and live up to your potential.

Q: As a pharmacist, how can I best prepare to adapt to the inevitable changes in the next 20 years?

A: The best piece of advice I can give to a budding pharmacist is to always remain flexible, agile, and open-minded. Commit to your passion wholeheartedly, whether it’s clinical practice, academia, public policy, or something else while remaining open to new, out-of the-box opportunities.

Second, anticipate AND accept innovation. As human beings, we are often resistant to change. In the face of change, our first instinct is to question it, resist it, and dismiss it as being short-lived. Those who anticipate innovation, embrace it, and evolve with it are the ones who will be successful long-term.