Steve Rough

Steve Rough (MS, RPh, FASHP) works with hospitals, health systems, pharmaceutical manufacturers, health plans, managed care organizations, and technology innovations to help them optimize their medication management programs. His expertise in supply chain, ambulatory services expansion, consolidated services design, benchmarking and productivity, and leadership team optimization are all key elements to optimizing the business of pharmacy for our clients.

Rough’s career has been focused on establishing innovative and sustainable high-value pharmacy programs and services at local and national levels. Most recently, Rough was the Senior Director of Pharmacy at University of Wisconsin (UW) Health for 16 years. In this role, he built a leading health system pharmacy program where he was responsible for all aspects of strategic, operational, clinical, programmatic and financial performance of the pharmacy enterprise and generated annual revenues of $1.3 billion. During his tenure, Rough constructed an environment where learners, technicians, pharmacists, researchers and educators practiced in harmony at the top of their skill sets, caring for patients in and between all care settings.

Also while at UW Health, Rough was a Clinical Associate Professor at the UW-Madison School of Pharmacy, Program Director for the Health-System Pharmacy Administration and Leadership Residency Training Program and served as the Academic Program Director for the Master’s Program in Health System Pharmacy Administration at the UW-Madison School of Pharmacy.

Rough is a prolific writer and speaker in the hospital pharmacy industry, including more than 40 publications in the professional literature and seven textbook contributions. He is a sought-after speaker with more than 145 presentations to national pharmacy audiences. Rough’s leadership has extended to many professional organizations, including the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), the Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin (PSW) and the Vizient University Health System Consortium Pharmacy Network. Rough’s professional recognitions include the PSW pharmacist of the year (2003), ASHP Section of Practice Manager’s Distinguished Service Award (2010), Winston J. Durant Lecture Award (2014), the John W. Webb Lecture Award (2016) and the PSW Distinguished Service Award (2017).

Rough earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from UW Madison and completed residency training in Pharmacy Practice and Pharmacy Administration at UW Hospital.