Growing up in Wisconsin, Kat Miller wasn’t sure what she wanted to do for a career, but she has faint memories of wanting to be a teacher. Being good at math and science, she changed her goal and decided to pursue a career in healthcare.
“My mom was a nurse, and my godfather was a pharmacist, so as I continued to learn more about that, I decided that pharmacy was the route I wanted to go,” Miller recalls. “Around the time I was making that decision, my godfather passed away. He was a community pharmacist, and he had patients coming to his funeral.”
That devotion was when Miller really understood the type of impact a pharmacist could have on patients and a community and solidified her career path forward.
Today, Miller serves as senior director of acute care pharmacy and clinical nutrition for The University of Kansas Health System, where she works with all of the inpatient and hospital pharmacy teams in the region. That covers six different facilities and nearly 300 employees who are taking care of some of the sickest patients in Kansas.
Four years ago, Miller had the opportunity to expand her scope to clinical nutrition. This means she often works with a team of fifty dieticians who work in both inpatient and outpatient across the region. “The work of a dietician is very similar to the work of a pharmacist,” the senior director explains. “You are really specialized in your area of focus and meet with the patients, understand their needs, balance that with what the physicians and nurses are seeing, and make really specific recommendations.”
The goal is to ensure that the patients are set up for success when they leave the facility. That means looking beyond what’s happening to them when they are in the hospital.
“We try to help them learn and grow and understand what their needs might be when they are home,” Miller shares.
She’s been with The University of Kansas Health System for nine years. At the beginning of her tenure, Miller brought on a nontraditional residency program, which she considers one of her biggest accomplishments.
“We had four programs and maybe twelve residents when we started, and we now have nine programs and twenty-four residents,” she boasts. “We’re continuing to develop where our pharmacy team has expertise and finding ways to train the future generation of pharmacists.”
Miller more recently integrated a few smaller community hospitals into the health system. While they don’t officially report to her, they all work on one electronic health record, so there’s a lot of leadership by influence and collaboration taking place.
“Over the last year or so, I have worn a project manager hat to align policies, procedures, workflows, and getting the right people in the room to make sure we are making decisions that will be best for all of our patients,” Miller explains. “Regardless of where they are seen, if it’s at an organization that says The University of Kansas Health System, then they are going to get the same level of care.”
The senior director subscribes to a leadership philosophy to help her leaders prioritize, remove barriers, then get out of the way to help them be the experts they are and do what they need to accomplish.
“We try to help patients learn and grow and understand what their needs might be when they are home.”
Kat Miller
Miller says that might mean getting informatics work prioritized or getting approval for funding. Sometimes it’s just connecting them to the right leader so they can work out the next steps. “We worked really hard last year to create a five- to ten-year strategic plan, so it’s about prioritizing to ensure it’s working toward where we want to be in that timeframe,” Miller says.
The senior director has also been instrumental in the implementation of safety-driven initiatives, including aligning the large volume IV drug pumps and libraries across the health system.
“We were able to move forward about six months ago in implementing new Alaris pumps and just rolled them out at our Kansas City sites and are continuing rolling them out at the rest of our campuses,” Miller notes.
At the end of 2025, her team expects all of their sites to be aligned with the same Alaris pump and same drug library. That will not only streamline how pharmacy technicians compound products, but also how physicians order and how nurses administer those medications.
Another safety initiative Miller calls out is the organization’s focus on transitions of care. This includes getting accurate medication histories when the patients are getting admitted, thanks in part to a preoperative assessment clinic where the pharmacists talk to any high-risk patients before their surgeries along with a group of specially trained pharmacy technicians collecting medication information in the emergency department and hospital. This goes as far as working through to the discharge side, where the pharmacists review all medications that patients are being discharged on.
“We also work hard to encourage our patients to use our pharmacies to ensure we are tracking the medication they are using on the ambulatory side, and we can help get them meds,” the senior director says.
Miller is also very active with the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), where she has served as chair of the council of pharmacy management and chair of the executive committee of the section of pharmacy practice leaders.
“During my residency, it was really instilled in me that we have to pay it forward and give back to the profession, and make it better tomorrow than it is today,” Miller explains. “Ever since, I have been involved in pharmacy organizations at the state or national level. It has allowed me the opportunity to serve in the House of Delegates representing the state of Kansas, where we write policy for our national organization.”
Having a strong mentor was instilled in Miller at a young age. It helped her find her career path.
“I think it’s so important for young pharmacists and experienced pharmacists to find someone they can talk to and grow with. I really enjoy that opportunity with the residency programs we have here and my work with ASHP, to find those people who maybe need a boost of confidence or have someone outside to believe in their skillset,” Miller shares. “So many people did that for me early on and continue to do that for me in my career.”
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