Chief Executive Officer Jude Dieterman knows that if he can improve patient outcomes, he’s also improving Outcomes, the company, formerly known as Transaction Data Systems (TDS), which he leads. That’s why he’s focusing on the place where everyone seeking medical treatment, advice, or supplies has to visit eventually: the pharmacy.
Specifically, he’s focused on community pharmacies, where the professionals behind the counter might know as much or more about their customers than a doctor who might be too overbooked or too expensive for them to see. “If you think about it,” Dieterman said in a 2024 interview, “the pharmacist sees the full list of a patient’s meds. They usually know people socially as well as economically, and they can help drive behavior. For example, they can help drive testing for diabetics and provide help with the testing as well.” Put simply, Dieterman said, “there’s an opportunity there.”
A few years ago, Dieterman said, most of the diabetic testing and other on-site services pharmacists administered were being done at big-box stores. As those locations have pulled back on providing many of these services, independent pharmacies have started to pick up the slack. While Dieterman ultimately believes there’s a happy medium to be reached, he said the new normal is much closer to it—and more satisfying: “It’s nice to see the mom & pops step up,” he said.
The Drury University graduate has been running TDS/Outcomes since 2018, spearheading its brand change in 2023 after joining with the company previously named Outcomes and keeping the name. And why not? The merger reflected the modern goals of the nearly 50-year-old TDS, so the name might as well be modern, and reflective of the company’s goals as well.
What Dieterman knows best of all is that mom-and-pops lack the resources of their mammoth competitors, and it’s on his team to do the high-level innovation so that community pharmacies can improve patient outcomes, of course. “When new drugs come out, the question is how to get them to the patient,” he said. “Can the people that need them afford the drug? Do they have access to the drug? There are programs that we can work directly with pharma companies and then bring directly to pharmacies to make sure those meds are getting to the people that need them.”
