Tara THORNTON

I've been in the patient services pharmaceutical field for over 20 years now. I started out doing data entry, and then a position came available at Blue Cross Blue Shield for a customer service representative. I applied, got the role, and knew that my character itself is help - I love helping people. So it came natural to me on the phone. I'm a quick learner, so while at Blue Cross Blue Shield, I moved up very quickly to team lead. When my job at Blue Cross Blue Shield faded and instead of taking a decrease, I moved to a company called Biogen, which introduced me to the pharmaceutical world. There I had a lot of opportunities to move into case management, quality, compliance, and their touch program that's regulated by the FDA. When they changed CEOs and cut 50% of their staff, I journeyed to Johnson & Johnson. Throughout my career, I've worked as a case manager helping patients get started on drugs by completing welcome calls, doing benefit investigations, and enrolling them in financial assistance. I've managed pharmacies like Caremark, CVS, and OptumRx, getting prescriptions to pharmacies and managing pharmacists to ensure patients got their drugs on time. I've worked in the shipment department setting up all shipments for pharmacies, and I worked with a pharmacy hub called Rare Meds sending out prescriptions for patients enrolled in our free drug program. I've held team lead roles and supervisor roles, and I've moved all over the place. Now as a trainer at Johnson & Johnson, I train all case managers, customer service representatives, and pharmacy liaison specialists. My favorite role is trainer because I've been in all the roles, so I know some of the one-off situations and workarounds, and I can teach them a little bit more than what's on the paper. I'm one of two trainers that actually have done all of the roles. I love process improvement - looking at a work construction and seeing where we can cut out things that are repetitious and make the process better. Right now I'm redoing all of our training manuals because there's a lot that needs to be done, and I'm working with the other trainer who also has hands-on experience to update the curriculum.