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For over twenty years Partners Pharmacy, headquartered in Springfield Township, New Jersey, has provided medication management for nearly fifty thousand residents in more than five hundred long-term care, assisted living, and skilled nursing facilities for fifteen states. Washington, DC-based Partners Pharmacy is one of the top three largest long-term care pharmacy companies in the US, a business that will no doubt continue to grow as baby boomers age into their golden years.
In 2018, Partners announced the launch of its new sister company, Avantum Hospice Pharmacy, extending its care to those at the end of their lives.
“We are so excited to announce the launch of Avantum,” said Anthony Spero, president of Avantum in the statement. “Avantum provides a great opportunity to expand our pharmacy service line. As the healthcare industry continues to evolve at a rapid pace, Avantum ensures the best service to meet patients’ hospice pharmacy needs.”
For an organization whose success depends on innovative technology to build cost-effective medication management, the chief information officer role is a critical one. That role was taken on by Ruben Soto in 2020.
The former IT and security officer at Partners Pharmacy has been with the company since 2014, and his promotion is clearly the result of what he was able to accomplish in his former role.
While serving as IT and security officer, Soto orchestrated a portfolio of large-scale projects and was charged with supplying strategic and tactical leadership. Soto shaped and led a ten-member help desk to provide technical support around the clock.
In the role, Soto was able to decrease operating costs by 30 percent while providing wider reliability, uptime, data availability, and security. Soto and his team also unified the wireless network access control and security through a partnership with Cisco.
During his tenure, Soto was able to accomplish half of the company’s entire recovery plan and extensive data center project while also performing risk and facility assessments for potential acquisitions, some merely proposed and others approved. The executive was also able to seamlessly relocate four pharmacies while still ensuring data security.
Soto’s success is well deserved. He grew up in an underserved neighborhood in New Jersey in a home where he shared a bed with his three brothers. He learned Spanish from his grandmother, who took care of him, but this also delayed his learning English for a number of years.
Early in his career, Soto was working as a night manager at a call center, but after a late night of studying at college, he became interested in another student working on a computer. It was motivation enough to take a technology class, and he even took a pay cut as a technician to get more experience in the area.
Just two months after being promoted to the CIO role, the pandemic hit. Soto has been successful in navigating the work-from-home environment for his people, moving data centers, and tackling a data breach.
Soto’s focus on empowerment and morale has helped make a challenging adjustment a successful one. He and his team of twenty-six continue to aid Partners Pharmacy by being proactive and efficient and adapting. Soto’s team are true partners at Partners.
