Current Award Recipients

Matthew T. Nye, PharmD

Doctor of Pharmacy - 1983

Matt Nye recently retired as Vice President, Pharmacy Services for Blue Shield of California. Matt graduated from the UNMC College of Pharmacy in 1983, did his residency at UC-San Francisco and then became part of the faculty in the UNMC College of Pharmacy. Matt returned to California as Drug Education Coordinator at Kaiser Permanente, the first academic-detailing position in the private sector. This program’s success led to the spread across Kaiser nationwide.

Matt eventually became the Vice President, Pharmacy Care Support Services leading Kaiser’s clinical and pharmacy benefits functions nationwide. Matt is an avid supporter of clinical pharmacy services. He started Kaiser’s first ambulatory care pharmacy residency. “Residency programs are a great incubator for talented clinical and administrative pharmacists”, Matt said. Matt was an author and sponsor of CA Senate Bill 1759 which allowed the broad practice of clinical pharmacy services in integrated health settings.

Through his years at Kaiser, the organization grew to employ hundreds of clinical pharmacists practicing under collaborative practice agreements in MTM, anticoagulation, geriatrics, HIV and other conditions. In the early 1990’s, Matt led a team of investigators from Kaiser and the University of Southern California to determine the value of patient consultation. The randomized controlled study looked at a general consult at the front counter of the pharmacy versus a narrower, but more intense, intervention with patients at a higher risk of drug related problems. The study found the more intensive intervention significantly improved outcomes. The study earned the ASHP Research and Education Award.

Matt was widely known for developing very strong, high performing teams. Throughout his career, Matt led highly diverse, high-performing teams with different backgrounds and points of view. “One of the things I am most proud of is that two of my direct reports were promoted to VP at Blue Shield”, Matt said. In retirement, Matt still connects with the practice of pharmacy. He serves as an advisor to a technology company, Gemini Health, that integrates drug cost and patient cost-sharing into the electronic medical record. Matt stated that “my experience has been that if you get the right information to the physician at the point of prescribing then better prescribing decisions result”.