Business and Biology, and Other Professional Compounds

by Sid Robinson

Spring 2004

When Timothy Tyler first started his residency training at the Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs — then known as the Desert Hospital — during his last year of studying for his doctor of pharmacy degree at USC, the only requirement his bosses had of him was that he play golf. The plan was good, except for one small detail. “They worked me about 80 hours a week, so I never had the chance to play,” says Tyler.

Despite a desert oasis full of golf courses at his disposal, Tyler focused on his work, and a year after taking on his residency, he was offered a managerial position at the hospital. More than a decade later, he is now the director of pharmacy for the Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Desert Regional Medical Center’s outpatient center for the detection, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of people with cancer.

A career in healthcare probably isn’t what Tyler expected when he graduated from Cal State San Bernardino in 1988 with a bachelor’s degree in — of all things — business administration with a marketing emphasis. He hoped to go into the field of pharmaceutical sales after graduation, but he had trouble finding the job he wanted. So he returned to his passion for healthcare and enrolled in the USC School of Pharmacy. His studies included his residency program at Desert Hospital, and he earned his doctoral degree in 1993.

Tyler’s path to the desert began with the oceans that border Orange County and extended east from there. Born in Laguna Beach and raised in the beach towns of Newport and Huntington, he studied pre-med for two years at the University of California, Riverside. He decided a business degree would be more practical, so he transferred to CSUSB and majored in marketing. Not giving up completely on the health sciences, he minored in biology and psychology. “In the upper division parasitology class, I vividly remember having to come up with 20 specimens for the class. Yes, 20 ‘road kills,’” he explained.

“The challenge was a difficult one and by mid session I was reduced to driving on the soccer field at midnight trying to swat rabbits with my tennis racquet. Needless to say campus security took a dim view, but they were laughing so hard they had to let me go.”

The pharmacist says his Cal State business degree has been an asset every day. “I really do combine both degrees in my current job. In operating the cancer center, I’m still able to impact the lives of our patients. But I also administer and manage a budget and I need to generate revenues to maintain business. I’m using both sides of my brain — the compassion I need to work with patients, as well as the technical skills I need as a professional and the business sense I need to run the pharmacy.”

He’s doing more than running a pharmacy. He was recently appointed to a four-year term on the Ambulatory Payment Classification (APC) Federal Advisory Panel in Washington, D.C. The 15-member panel advises the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on outpatient payment for healthcare and provides insight on changes to the outpatient prospective payment system. Members of the APC Panel are clinicians who are considered experts in their fields.

“Along with having input into federal policy, this gives me a platform to advocate for cancer patients,” he said. “After 10 years here in the desert, I’ve gotten very active and vocal in offering advice to Medicare about how outpatients pay for drugs.” Tyler’s efforts are recognized closer to home, too. In 2002, he was honored by the California Society of Health System Pharmacists for his contributions to the society and profession over the past decade.

Tyler was active in the Sigma Chi fraternity while enrolled at CSUSB. As rush chairman, he once hosted “Louie, Louie Day” in front of the Pfau Library, with a teeter-totter and overstuffed lounge chairs to welcome students to the first day of classes. “That kind of thing just had never been done,” he recalled. “It verged on scandalous at the time, but I’m sure that it would barely turn heads now. The campus has changed dramatically since then.” Tyler and fraternity brother Christopher Ross (also a 1988 graduate, have remained actively involved with Sigma Chi, returning to visit with the undergraduate chapter twice a year for the past 17 years.

Tyler’s life remains full from sunup to sundown. He travels extensively, giving presentations to doctors around the world. He sings in his church choir and has backed up several famous performers at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert, including Barry Manilow and Jack Jones. He could be the headliner himself. One of Tyler’s patients thought Tyler should be doing stand-up comedy and once wanted to introduce him to the owner of The Improv. Tyler may not be a “Patch Adams,” but he has found a way to use humor as much as drugs to help some of his patients manage their pain and get through their cancer.

For now, Tyler will stick to medicine and perhaps a bit more. While he currently isn’t teaching, he is an adjunct clinical professor of pharmacy at USC, University of the Pacific in Stockton and Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, and he would like to someday teach part-time in the new nursing program at CSUSB’s Palm Desert Campus. Already, he has supported the campus’s early development. The fact that he lives a few blocks away should give him plenty of time to manage a second career in the desert. It’s either that, or take up golf.