Rebecca Taylor, Hometown Hero

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While attending pharmacy school at the University of Pittsburgh, Rebecca Taylor took classes in a building she already knew well. As a child, she and her family sought subsidized dental care at the Pittsburgh School of Dentistry, the same building that housed the university’s pharmacy school. Her parents, a mechanic and a stay-at-home mom, didn’t have dental coverage.

“Later in life, my family realized that dental fillings didn’t actually take four hours,” Taylor says, laughing. “But we’d have four different residents poking around in our mouth and getting experience, so it took a while.”

Taylor’s upbringing taught her the value of hard work and never taking anything for granted. Holidays and school shopping were extra special, and while her family didn’t live in luxury, they always had enough.

Today, Taylor is the vice president of the pharmacy service line at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. She previously spent thirteen years working through numerous roles at the Cleveland Clinic. While she has had important mentors in her career, the VP traces much of her early inspiration to people with no formal medical or pharmaceutical training at all.

“I grew up very close to my Aunt Mary, who worked for an insurance company in downtown Pittsburgh,” Taylor remembers. “She brought me to work and I got to see her excel at her job. At the same time, my mom always wanted to be a nurse, and she spent a great deal of time caring for her own family members at the end of their lives. She was a natural caretaker.

“My Aunt Suzy had worked her way up to be the vice president of the phone company. And then there was my dad, who is so meticulous and hardworking. He would build model cars at home and take so much time and care.” Taylor spent many Saturdays in the family-owned garage where her dad worked with her great uncle and cousins. “Those are the role models who inspired me to build my own career.”

Taylor came to UPMC in 2021 and was promoted to her current role just a year and a half later. She applies her expertise to overseeing a period of incredible transformation, as the organization moves from ten individual electronic medical record systems to a single provider in Epic through the Bridges program.

“If any of my family members needed specialty medication, [University of Pittsburgh’s] specialty pharmacy would be my first choice, hands down.”

Rebecca Taylor

The Bridges program will drive integration, standardization, and more seamless care for UPMC patients and clinicians alike. The VP wants to implement a more consistent patient, provider, and pharmacy experience across Pittsburgh and smaller communities, like Altoona and Somerset, Pennsylvania.

At the same time, Taylor is focused on expanding UPMC’s pharmacy capabilities. A partnership with CarePathRX in the specialty pharmacy space also includes home infusion and enteral services.

“CarePathRx is the best in the business, with a state-of-the-art facility that allows us to provide specialty drugs for our patients,” Taylor explains. “More broadly, we’re able to operate as a center of excellence. If any of my family members needed specialty medication, our specialty pharmacy would be my first choice, hands down.”

UPMC is also addressing “pharmacy deserts”—where retail locations have closed down or never existed in the first place—with its Meds to Beds program. The program provides patients with the medications they need before discharge from the hospital.

“We have seventeen locations and are there to provide care 24/7, 365,” Taylor says. Pharmacists have access to patient EMRs and know what happened during a patient’s stay, which aids with continuity of care.

Taylor’s first job was in retail pharmacy, so she understands firsthand how important frontline workers, like pharmacists, are in getting patients what they need. “I’m not on the front lines now, so I want to help our pharmacists and our patients any way that I can,” she says.

One way to help pharmacists and patients is to tackle workforce challenges. Amid labor shortages and declining pharmacy school enrollment, Taylor says her organization is examining automation for low-skill, routine processes. That way, highly qualified pharmacy technicians can spend more front-facing time with patients.

Outside of driving pharmacy innovation at UPMC, Taylor is always on the move, keeping busy with CrossFit, biking, or spending time with her daughters and husband. Taylor is a homegrown success story: granddaughter of a steelworker, daughter of a mechanic and homemaker, and mother to two girls who will surely make their own mark on the world.

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