Ralph Petri, Kerr Drug

Drug Store News, April 21, 2008

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Ralph Petri, senior vice president of pharmacy and logistics for Kerr Drug, is another veteran of Thrift Drug who came to Kerr with its purchase in 1997.

Petri began with Thrift in 1968, while still in pharmacy school at Duquesne. He's no stranger to industry issues or to Capitol Hill: In recent years, he's chaired the National Association of Chain Drug Stores Medicare/Medicaid task force and has served in leadership roles for other pharmacy affairs efforts and for meetings like the Medicare Part B conference in Washington.

Petri is what some may call a "pharmacist's pharmacist," who never seems to have forgotten the concerns of bench practitioners or the headaches they confront dealing with monolithic pharmacy benefit managers, burdensome insurance adjudication issues or administrative roadblocks in the dispensing workload. He also doesn't mince words about what he sees as the challenges that pharmacy leaders must overcome.

"The managed care world has forced us into this inevitable game of Russian roulette," he once told Drug Store News. "They tell us, 'Here's the rate, take it or leave it, and I've got everyone in the network except you.'"