Tasha Polster

Biographical Information:

Tasha Polster is the Vice President of Pharmacy Quality, Compliance and Patient Safety for Walgreens. Her responsibilities include overseeing the Retail Pharmacy Immunization program, Pharmacovigilance group and patient safety, as well as implementing strategic initiatives such as prescription billing, electronic prescribing and automation in the pharmacy. In addition, Ms. Polster supervises the pharmaceutical integrity group, which was established to take on the challenging task of implementing guidelines for the proper dispensing of controlled substances, resulting in the roll out of Walgreens Drug Take Back and naloxone programs to combat the misuse of narcotics. Ms. Polster is also actively involved in transforming community pharmacy and expanding the role of pharmacists and technicians by allowing them to work at the top of their licenses. Tasha earned her B.S. in Pharmacy from the University of Colorado.

Current employment, practice, and academic responsibilities:

Walgreens is one of the nation's largest retail pharmacy chains. Ms. Polster oversees the pharmacy compliance execution of the retail pharmacies ensuring state board regulations are followed, computer enhancements to assist the practice of pharmacy align with state and federal regulations and guidelines including electronic prescribing, pharmacy claim processing and patient safety to mitigate external prescription events. Additionally Ms. Polster oversees the COVID-19 vaccination program.

Significant projects and Accomplishments:

Nationwide Prescription Take Back Kiosks, Nationwide Naloxone program, and most recently the nationwide rollout of COVID-19 vaccines and launch of training and execution of technician immunization training to align with the executive order extending scope of practice of technicians to assist in administering COVID-19 vaccines.

Please describe your professional involvement with ASHP:

In 2019, I was invited to participate in the ASHP Opioid Task Force. The interdisciplinary ASHP Opioid Task Force was charged by the ASHP Board of Directors with identifying actionable recommendations, solutions, and resources to help address the national opioid epidemic through the engagement of pharmacists as medication therapy experts, clinicians, and providers on the interprofessional team.