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KEEFE PROFESSORSHIP
An ad for a director of hospital pharmacy services based in Shelbyville, Ill., caught Patrick Keefe’s eye and set his career off in a new direction. That was in 1977, and since then Keefe, ‘69 BSPh, has risen to the heights of corporate leadership in the world of pharmaceutical services.
Today Keefe is executive vice president and chief operating officer of Omnicare, Inc., a leading provider of pharmaceutical care for 1.4 million residents of skilled nursing, assisted living and other facilities in 47 states and Canada. The company is a $6 billion-a-year business with 17,000 employees and a raft of subsidiaries and divisions serving seniors, residential facilities, health plans, pharmaceutical manufacturers, researchers and others.
He also is a major donor to the College of Pharmacy, having recently committed $750,000 to support an endowed faculty chair.
Keefe’s road to the executive suite didn’t begin in Shelbyville, but in a hardscrabble childhood in central Iowa. The family moved often as his father, a farmhand and construction worker, took different jobs; indeed, Keefe attended 11 different schools by the time he graduated from high school.
He credits his mother, who never finished high school, with instilling in him the values of hard work, service and education. “She was one of the smartest people I’ve ever known,” Keefe said, “and she always emphasized education. ” But, he added, she insisted her children have clear professional goals to guide their learning and ambitions.
“All of us ended up doing well in our careers, and it was because of our mother,” he said.
The College figured prominently in Keefe’s journey. It was there that he discovered the diverse opportunities available within the profession, including the one that eventually called the loudest to him.
The UI, Keefe said, “opened my eyes to the vision that pharmacy can be more than retail.” He continued: “Everybody needs to find the niche in pharmacy where they can contribute the most. For me, I enjoyed the clinical side of pharmacy, but frankly, I always enjoyed the business aspect more.”
A seeming incongruity in Keefe’s career trajectory—a three-year stint as a volunteer in a remote Mexican village—actually played an important part in his professional formation. Keefe and his wife, Sue, went there through a volunteer program organized and supported by the Davenport Diocese of the Catholic Church.
With their skills as a pharmacist and nurse, respectively, the Keefes established and operated a clinic in Tila, in Mexico’s southernmost state of Chiapas. The town had no electricity or running water, and the people—of the indigenous Ch’ol culture—relied on traditional medicine to treat their illnesses. The Keefes provided emergency services and dispensed drugs provided by the World Health Organization to treat chronic diseases.
By the time they returned to the United States, they had started a vaccination program for children, conducted health outreach throughout the local coffee-growing region and trained members of Tila and nearby villages to deliver babies and provide basic care in their communities. The clinic they started still operates, now under the auspices of an order of Catholic nuns.
“It was a heady time,” Keefe said. “It was probably the time that cemented our marriage”—the couple’s oldest son, Michael, was born in Chiapas—“and it also gave me confidence in myself.
“It was partly through that that I realized clinical care was great, but management was where I could have the greatest impact.”
Keefe was a staff pharmacist at Burlington Memorial Hospital when he saw the ad for the pharmaceutical services director position. The job, with a company called HPI, a provider of hospital pharmacy management services, propelled him into the world of business and management. “I was intrigued by the combination of pharmacy skills and business,” Keefe said. “It was the first time I’d been held accountable for a profit-and-loss statement.”
A series of positions followed, each increasing in responsibility and scale of oversight, until Keefe became executive vice president and then president of HPI. Meanwhile, corporate mergers and buyouts moved HPI first under Omnicare and then, in 1989, under Diagnostek, Inc. Through it all, Keefe led initiatives to improve pharmacy services and reduce costs without compromising clinical outcomes for patients.
Keefe returned to Omnicare in 1993 as senior vice president of operations and in the years that followed moved into other top management roles, including executive vice president of operations and executive vice president of global markets. In January, he was named to his current position.
“Hard work does pay off,” Keefe said. “But more than that, taking care of the residents and doing the right thing has been the key. Omnicare fosters that attitude and I’m proud to work for it.”
The company’s phenomenal growth stems from the efforts of everyone in the organization, he said, and he noted the guidance and mentorship he’s received from Edward Hutton, chairman of Omnicare’s board, and Joel Gemunder, president and CEO. He said he also has benefited from working with an “untold number of extremely dedicated pharmacists and other support staff who never forget their commitment to improve the lives of the frail elderly under their care.”
Of his gift to the College, Keefe said he is deeply grateful for the education he received at the UI and the state’s public schools. “I don’t think there are many states that have the kind of education system Iowa has,” he said. And he knows his gift will be put to good use. “I have the utmost confidence the College and the new dean will use the money in a way that benefits the greatest number of students and faculty.”
In the end, Keefe reflected, his gift is one more outgrowth of his upbringing. His mother taught that “however well you do, the rewards are not yours but something you hold in trust,” he said. “Each of us needs to be judged by what we do with what we have.”
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