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Berit Hjelmstad
Thrifty White Pharmacy #778
321 North Jefferson St.
Wadena, Minn. 56482
https://www.thriftywhite.com/
WADENA, Minn. — For Berit Hjelmstad, pharmacy manager and regional support pharmacist at Thrifty White, her career path to pharmacy was paved by her father’s job in retail. “My dad was the store manager of a grocery store in my hometown, and he had a good working relationship with the pharmacists and technicians that worked in their pharmacy. I expressed a strong interested in math and science, specifically chemistry, during school, and he always nudged me toward pharmacy. I had the opportunity to shadow the pharmacist in his grocery store and another at a local hospital system during my early years in high school and fell in love with the profession and the relationships the pharmacists had with their patients and our community. From there I had my eyes set on pharmacy and never looked back,” she explains.
Hjelmstad graduated from North Dakota State University in 2018 with a dual degree: a doctorate in pharmacy and a master of public health. Upon graduation, she started with Thrifty White Pharmacy in one of its closed-door, long-term care pharmacies. “While I enjoyed this chapter of my career, I wanted an opportunity to utilize my public health training within the community pharmacy setting. I also recognized my desire to work within a rural community near my hometown. An opportunity presented the following year to move back to that area and transition into a pharmacy manager role with Thrifty White Pharmacy. And in March of 2023 I was presented the opportunity to build upon my current position and expand into our field management team, serving as regional support pharmacist,” she relates.
Hjelmstad says that one of the values at Thrifty White Pharmacy is being patient-centered. “We tailor data-driven, personalized care to individual goals, values and preferences. Engaging with our patients to provide clinical services is at the root of our daily workflow within the pharmacy. We have proprietary software to provide a platform to both conduct prescription dispensing functions and serve as a patient management system to support clinical services. To help support efficient prescription dispensing processes, our pharmacies are able to balance the workload across pharmacies. This has provided flexibility to our pharmacists to prioritize urgent patient needs and provide additional clinical services outside of dispensing prescriptions. This has also led to an increase in job satisfaction for our pharmacy teams,” she explains.
Thrifty White provides a variety of clinical services, including medication therapy management (MTM), medication adherence programs, immunizations and point-of-care testing. “We continue to expand our service offering to further care for patients by supporting patients with complex disease states, addressing preventative health care gaps, and connecting patients to social and medical resources. One program that has been very successful at my pharmacy location is focused on addressing open gaps in preventative health care services. Through engagement and education regarding their specific gaps in care, we have been able to have a significant impact on the patients in our community. Through this program we provide assistance scheduling appointments and working through barriers to care, such as transportation, cost and schedules to help them address their needs. We partner with our local health care systems to ensure our patients are able to complete their appointment or preventative service to further improve the overall health of our community.”
Hjelmstad adds that Thrifty White further collaborates with local health care systems to implement new programs and initiatives to help meet the needs of the community. She says examples include partnering with a local clinic to find solutions for uninsured patients to get their medications, becoming a naloxone access point, providing referrals for preventative health services and connecting patients to resources within the local community.
When asked what is her favorite part of the job, she says, “My patients. Working in a small rural community allows me the opportunity to really get to know my patients. I look forward to my monthly interactions with them and the ability to get to know them on a more individual level than just the medications they take. I feel strongly these relationships that I am able to build with my patients allows for a mutual trust that translates into improved patient outcomes through the services I provide at Thrifty White.”
She points out that another rewarding part of her career is serving as a leader to the pharmacy teams within her region. “I enjoy helping them provide care for patients within their communities. Through my public health training, I learned that a core foundation is protecting and improving the health of entire communities and populations. Upon graduation, I was unsure where my public health training would lead me on my career path. In my current role, I have a good balance of both pharmacy and public health. I am able to take care of my own community while also reaching and impacting communities across the state. Additionally, my current role allows me to be an active participant in conversations that impact our company and strengthen our pharmacy teams and serve the patients they care for.”
Mentors have helped provide guidance along the path of her career. Thrifty White has an Emerging Leader program that connects technicians and pharmacists to a mentor through a structured mentorship focusing on the growth of future leaders in the company and profession. “I’ve had the opportunity to participate in this program under the mentorship of Molly Naumann, senior regional support pharmacist. Molly’s perspective and guidance has helped influence and mold my own leadership style. Additionally, my current role as a regional support pharmacist allows me to work closely with Kelsey Schlieman, senior regional support pharmacist. Through this role, I also interact frequently with all of the members of our field leadership team, in addition to our corporate leadership team. I consider each of these colleagues to be a mentor, and I have grown from my shared experiences and interactions with each person’s unique expertise in our field,” she concludes.
