Carla M. Marrero-Vázquez, PharmD
Healthcare Strategy & Pharmacy Consultant
Dr. Carla M. Marrero-Vázquez is an experienced pharmacist and healthcare consultant with over 16 years of expertise in pharmacy operations, healthcare regulations, medication management, and clinical program development. Unlike traditional pharmacy roles, her work focuses on improving healthcare quality, ensuring medication safety, containing costs, and optimizing operations while ensuring regulatory compliance for health plans, pharmacies, and healthcare organizations.
Areas of Expertise
- Pharmacy Operations– Aligning workflows, policies, and procedures to align with strategic goals, enhance medication use and safety, improve quality measures, and ensure regulatory compliance.
- Cost-Effective Medication Strategies– Conducting drug utilization analysis to help health plans and organizations reduce medication costs while maintaining high-quality, safe, and effective care.
- Medical Writing, Drug Policy Development & Formulary Management– Creating evidence-based guidelines for medication coverage, safety protocols, and reimbursement of complex medications to ensure fair and effective use of healthcare resources.
- Regulatory Compliance & Accreditation– Ensuring health plans and healthcare organizations meet and exceed regulatory requirements from CMS (Medicare), NCQA, and other accrediting bodies.
- Medication Safety & Risk Mitigation– Developing policies and strategies to prevent medication errors, enhance drug safety protocols, and ensure adherence to best practices in pharmacovigilance and patient safety initiatives.
- Healthcare Regulations & Strategy - Developing SOPs and compliance programs while advising healthcare organizations on improving medication access, utilization, safety, and healthcare quality metrics, including CMS Star Ratings and quality measures.
Career Impact & Achievements
- Clinical Program & Healthcare Regulations: As Manager of the Medication Therapy Management (MTM) Program for one of Puerto Rico's largest Medicare Advantage plans, she led initiatives that improved medication adherence, regulatory compliance, and patient engagement for over 20,000 members annually. She also helped the plan achieve a 5-star rating from CMS and led the program's NCQA Population Health Management accreditation, a first for Puerto Rico.
- Pharmacy Cost Management: As Pharmacy Operations Director for a national healthcare company based in Missouri, she developed and implemented strategies to reduce medication costs, improve Stars measures, and optimize drug coverage policies across multiple healthcare systems in Florida, Missouri, Boston, and Hawaii.
- Innovative Consulting Solutions: Now serving as Vice President & Co-Founder of MindfulRx, she works with health plans, pharmacies, and healthcare organizations to design cost-effective drug policies, formulary management strategies, and pharmacy compliance programs that enhance medication safety and healthcare delivery.
Bridging Healthcare & Business Strategy
Dr. Marrero-Vázquez'sexpertise is valuable to organizations that need guidance on navigating pharmacy costs, regulations, healthcare policies, and strategic decision-making in healthcare. Whether working with health plans, healthcare systems, or policymakers, she helps simplify complex pharmacy challenges to ensure patients' cost-effective, high-quality, and safe medication access.
A graduate of the University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus, with a Doctor of Pharmacy degree, she is a trusted consultant for organizations looking to optimize healthcare costs, improve medication access and safety, and strengthen regulatory compliance.