2021 Health Care Champions Technician: Abby Strickfaden

In her role as a pharmacy technician, Abby Strickfaden believes she isn’t just someone who provides medications to patients – she’s their advocate.

Strickfaden has accrued eight years of experience in the profession, including the past three at CoxHealth Pharmacy, where she manages monthly refills for over 400 patients, as well helping them obtain financial assistance while working to gather medication authorizations from insurance companies.

“The specific patient population I help manage has chronic autoimmune disorders such as multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, severe asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, several forms of cancer and many more,” she says. “In the overall picture of health care in the Ozarks, my role is to help patients with chronic diseases better manage their disease.”

Because Strickfaden’s patients are on immunosuppressant medications, she says the COVID-19 pandemic’s arrival last year had many of them contemplating halting their therapy to try and get their immune system back to normal.

“When patients wanted to stop therapy, I expressed the risk they took in worsening their conditions and increasing their chances of being hospitalized,” she says. “When patients were concerned with going out in public to pick up their medications, I worked with them to get their medications delivered directly to them through contactless delivery.”

Strickfaden says the pandemic’s impact on mail and delivery services resulted in delays that led to more than a dozen of the pharmacy’s patients having medications ruined in transit due to temperature requirements.

“After a strong push from myself and others on my team, we were able to switch delivery carriers,” she says. “It’s important for patients to not miss doses and that their medications stay refrigerated during transit.”

It’s that kind of attention to detail that impresses Ryan Baker, CoxHealth’s ambulatory care director for pharmacy. He notes Strickfaden’s personality combined with multitasking talents and genuine care for the welfare of patients has made her an asset to the health system.

“Her professional skills have earned her considerable respect both inside and outside our pharmacy department as she works directly with multiple insurance companies, physicians, nurses, and fellow pharmacists and pharmacy technicians,” he says.

Even though she loves her work, Strickfaden has ambitions to move beyond her current position.

“I want to be in a leadership role that oversees programs, such as the one I work for,” she says. “I want to be able to advocate for patients so that we make decisions that are in their best interest. In order to do so, I need to be in a position to make such decisions.”

To that end, Strickfaden is pursuing her master’s degree in public health at Missouri State University. She intends to complete her studies in spring 2022, and her degree would complement the master’s degree in health administration she received in 2020 at MSU.

Aside from school, Strickfaden also seeks leadership and service opportunities as a member of professional development group CoxHealth Young Professionals.

“Learning how to build relationships between departments will be beneficial in my future career by being able to get differing organizations to come together for a common cause,” she says.