John Sykora, BSPharm, MBA
John Sykora, BSPharm, MBA
Individual Award for Career Achievement
As the “Father of the Appointment-Based Model” pharmacist Sykora is an innovative leader with widespread influence on pharmacy practice. Throughout his career, Pharmacist Sykora demonstrated a deep, career-long commitment to direct patient care through his pharmacy practice at Abrams and Clark Pharmacy in Long Beach, California. He displayed leadership by serving in various roles with the California Pharmacists Association, APhA, the Long Beach Pharmacists Association, the Pharmacy & Therapeutics Committee of SCAN Health Plan, and the Pharmaceutical Care Network. He remains actively involved with academic institutions in California and his alma mater, University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, by serving as a preceptor. Perhaps the accomplishment that serves as the pinnacle of his distinguished career occurred in 1997 when he pioneered the creation of the “personal service program” (PSP). This simple yet revolutionary idea centered on synchronizing the delivery of patient medications with the delivery of pharmaceutical care to improve patient health outcomes.
Now, more than 20 years later, the appointment-based model is a well-established practice standard. Often termed “Med Synch,” this model is used in over 22,000 community pharmacies and has received national recognition by APhA and other leading pharmacist associations including the Pharmsave pharmacies in Canada. This program inspired the APhA Foundation’s “Align My Refills” initiative. It also spurred the California legislation to require health plans to approve most refill synchronization requests. John Sykora’s revolutionary ideas have had, and will continue to have, extraordinary positive impacts on patient outcomes for many years to come.