2026 Chief Pharmacy Officer Priorities Snapshot

Pharmacy leaders are the most financially focused executives in health system C-suites. CPOs are the only CXO group to rank both maximizing revenue capture and strategic cost management as their top shared priorities (tied at 4.8), reflecting pharmacy's unique dual role as both a significant cost center and a major revenue driver. With 340B compliance/optimization and specialty pharmacy management as their top two overall priorities, CPOs are laser-focused on protecting and growing pharmacy's financial contribution to the enterprise.

Precision medicine and telepharmacy represent pharmacy's future — but CPOs aren't investing in them yet. Precision medicine ranks dead last (23rd) as a strategic priority but is the number one improvement opportunity, and telepharmacy ranks 24th as a priority while sitting 4th for improvement. This is the most dramatic priority-to-opportunity gap of any CXO role, suggesting pharmacy leaders see transformative potential in these areas but are still consumed by today's operational and financial imperatives. Organizations that can bridge this gap early will be well-positioned as these capabilities mature.

CPOs stand apart from their peers on AI — and not in the way you'd expect. While AI strategy ranks as the top or near-top priority for CMOs, CHROs, and CFOs, CPOs place it 10th — the lowest ranking among all CXO roles. Yet pharmacy technology integration and automation (including AI) ranks as the 2nd-highest improvement opportunity. This suggests CPOs aren't disinterested in AI; they're approaching it through a domain-specific, applied lens rather than as an enterprise-wide strategic conversation, and may need more support connecting pharmacy-specific automation needs to broader organizational AI governance.