HDMA elects new directors to its board; Boehringer Ingelheim exec wins Nexus Award

At its annual Business and Leadership Conference (Orlando, FL), HDMA elected three new members to its board:

Scott Franklin, president, Top Rx, Inc. (Bartlett, TN)

Lenny Rodriguez, CEO, Attain Med, Inc. (Atlanta)

R. Todd Szewc, CFO, KeySource Medical (Cincinnati)

John Gray, HDMA president, commented that the new directors bring “distinctive new voices to our Board;” he might have been referring to the fact that the companies represented by these directors put an emphasis either on generics-only distribution or on serving independent pharmacies—or both. In recent years, HDMA has emphasized that it represents “full line” distributors (i.e., most types of branded or generic pharmaceuticals, to most types of dispensing customers). Even so, it is true that more than 80% of all pharmaceuticals distributed in the US are generic, and that independent pharmacies (especially in the aftermath of the AmerisourceBergen-Walgreens-Alliance Boots linkage) are hotly contested by the Big Three wholesalers and most other HDMA members.

At the meeting, HDMA also announced that Robert Belknap has won the Nexus award for lifetime achievement, sponsored by its Center for Healthcare Supply Chain Research and Genentech, Inc. Belknap, executive director of trade sales and operations at Boehringer Ingelheim, is an expert in fee-for-service contracts and pharmacy marketing, including medication therapy management, patient adherence and compliance. His career includes Dial Corp. and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and he has been on HDMA’s Industry Relations Council and chair of the Center in 2009—10.