The PQA Board of Directors represents a diverse group of thought leaders and experts in health care, who understand how medication optimization improves patient outcomes and supports a value-based care system. Their expertise helps PQA advance the safe and appropriate use of medicines. This blog is one in a series profiling PQA's Board members. 

James Kirby, PharmD, BCPS, FAPhA, is PQA’s Board Chair for 2025. He is the Chief Commercial Officer for Kroger Health and has been a board member since 2022. In this Q&A, he shares with us his background, experience and insights on PQA’s work.

Tell us about your background and role as the Chief Commercial Officer at Kroger Health?

I started at Kroger Health 23 years ago as a clinical coordinator for the Cincinnati/Dayton region. My role in that position, and as shared faculty for the University of Cincinnati, was to develop clinical services within the community and create a pipeline of change agents for the practice of pharmacy. Eventually I transitioned to our corporate office to align and scale those clinical services across all our twenty operating divisions. I still oversee program development today but am now focused on health care innovation and collaborating with payers, pharmaceutical companies, providers, and patients to bring these holistic solutions to market.

As a pharmacist and long-time leader in the community pharmacy space, what unique perspectives do you bring to PQA’s work and medication use quality? 

I have worked in both the payer and provider segments, including hospital, mail, and specialty pharmacy. Collectively with my Kroger tenure, I have a diverse perspective from many different aspects of the drug/clinical service delivery system. No matter my role, I have always kept the patient at the center, trying to improve access to care and the quality of care they deserve. This means knowing patients deeply and collaborating with other members of their health team. I believe community pharmacists are essential to coordinating patient care, inspiring behavior change within individuals and system change within organizations that can enable interprofessional collaboration and connection to community-based organizations.

Kroger Health’s mission includes work to improve outcomes by creating solutions that combine health, wellness and nutrition. How does PQA’s work and Kroger Health’s engagement with PQA help advance this goal?

First of all, I would thank PQA for taking the lead to collect real-world examples of social determinants of health (SDOH) services in action and then publishing them in three resource guides. There are many organizations doing such amazing work in this space. I think this endeavor is just one example of how PQA’s and Kroger Health’s missions are aligned. I believe that improving medication use and quality cannot happen in a vacuum and needs to consider many other aspects of patients’ lives. We cannot begin to address medication adherence or gaps in care for someone with diabetes if they are struggling to pay rent or feed their children. Thinking even beyond housing and food security if we consider that most chronic diseases can be positively affected through better diet, we cannot ignore the impact of nutrition security. So, if we want to improve chronic condition management, and prevent disease before it starts, we have to approach food as medicine, in addition to optimal medication usage.  

How would you describe the value that PQA delivers for our health care system?

PQA is critical in determining how we measure ourselves in providing patient-centered care and creating opportunities between pharmacies and payers to incentivize that care. It is well known that health care quality and improvement begin with measurement. And aligning those measures among all the stakeholders in the care delivery system, from payers to providers to patients, is critical.

But aside from measure development and supporting measure use, I really love that PQA convenes members that are all united under a common goal to transform our health care system to one that is based on collaboration, quality, outcomes, and prevention. None of us can undertake such an audacious task by ourselves, nor should we. But together we can go a lot further and have generational impact.

Our health care system is constantly evolving in many ways. What do you see as the future for quality improvement in medication use and medication services?  

Unfortunately, I am old enough to remember the advent of electronic adjudication of prescriptions and the expectations by patients and providers that pharmacists were the subject matter experts of insurance coverage: prior authorizations, formularies, deductibles, copays, coinsurance, etc. Now it is a standard practice in community pharmacies to not only know but intervene when necessary to ensure patients have access to the most affordable, effective medications. I think there is a very real future where pharmacists will be expected to provide the same level of expertise and intervention on the social determinants of health: identification of needs, referral, follow-up, and coverage of eligible services.

I also see a world where pharmacies could receive a “grade” based on the care they provide. I would love to say “patients choose Kroger as their pharmacy because they actually get healthier.”

As PQA’s Board Chair, what are your priorities for the organization? 

For me, I’m most excited about seeing the progress on the strategic investments the organization is making to strengthen and modernize quality measurement and recognize pharmacy’s contributions to high quality patient-centered care. I think these are game changers at a time when community pharmacy needs them the most. I am also excited to work on updating our strategic “Blueprint” that will guide the organization for the next five years. If I look at what we aimed to accomplish under the 2025 plan, it makes me very proud to be part of PQA. We say what we do, and we do what we say. But while I celebrate the organization’s success, there is still much to do.

What do you like to do when you’re not chairing the PQA Board or working in a large national pharmacy chain? 

Professionally, I am also very involved in APhA and a member of the board of the Community Pharmacy Foundation. I think both these organizations have an important role to play in the future of the Alliance. I am also an Adjunct Associate Professor of Pharmacy Practice and Administrative Sciences at the University of Cincinnati as I am still very passionate about residency and fellowship training and equipping the next generation of pharmacists.

Personally, I am the proud parent of four children, ages 16, 15, 12, 10, which is probably the most taxing, yet rewarding job of all. With two kids, you are playing man-to man defense. With three, you have moved into zone coverage. With four, you just hope to get off the court without injury.