August 26, 2026

Romelia Garcia: Strong Operations, Better Participant Care

OnePoint PACE is proud to have Romelia Garcia serve on our Board of Directors, bringing valuable leadership, perspective and firsthand insight into the evolving needs of PACE organizations and the participants they serve. Their expertise helps guide our continued commitment to delivering pharmacy solutions built specifically for the PACE model.

Romelia Garcia has built her career around a simple principle: healthcare should work better for the people it serves.

Her path into end-of-life care was not one she originally planned. Early in her career, Romelia worked in private-duty care, where she became involved in state and national efforts to improve standards and advocated for patients.

Later, when she joined Heartland Hospice as the Administrator, she arrived with some of the same misconceptions about hospice that families often have. But that changed almost immediately.

“I realized on my first day that this is where I belong,” said Romelia. “In hospice, you might not be able to change the outcome of a terminal illness, but you can change the experience leading up to it. People remember the Nurses – and as a leader, I took that very seriously.”

For Garcia, end-of-life care is ultimately about life—helping people remain comfortable, connected to family and able to experience meaningful moments for as long as possible.

Her introduction to PACE came years later, after joining Sutter Health in 2017 as Director of Hospice. Not long after, Romelia was asked to lead the PACE program.

She quickly identified opportunities to strengthen accountability, introduce meaningful performance measures and rethink care management.

Within a year and a half, it became profitable, and in its second year under Romelia’s leadership Sutter’s PACE program exceeded budget by more than $7 million.

The experience reinforced Garcia’s belief that successful PACE programs require both a strong mission and effective operations.

“PACE exists to help participants remain as independent as possible, for as long as possible in their home,” she says, “and every member of the organization needs to understand that goal.”

At the same time, Romelia notes, because PACE organizations act as both provider and payer, leaders must carefully evaluate whether services are truly supporting participant independence, while also acting as responsible stewards of program resources.

That balance requires the right team, organizational alignment and the agility to respond to individual participant needs.

Romelia also sees significant opportunities for pharmacy and PBM partners to play a more integrated role in PACE.

“Early on, I was frustrated with our PBM, who wasn’t delivering strong value to our program. It felt very disconnected, and we did not receive much support from either pharmacy or pharmacist” says Romelia.

Her experience showed her the value of having pharmacists who understand the unique clinical needs of participants and can work directly with care teams, rather than operating separately from them.

Romelia believes OnePoint PACE can help bridge that gap by bringing greater clinical support and pharmacy expertise more directly into participant care.

“There is a lot of opportunity to provide consistent clinical support to programs that is different from the current industry model” she says.

Across her career, Garcia says she is most proud not simply of strong financial turnarounds or documented organizational growth, but of the teams behind those results.

She describes herself as someone who loves operations and challenging turnaround environments, and her philosophy of leadership remains deeply team-oriented.

For Romelia, successful leadership is ultimately not about the individual leader. It is about the team.

The strongest results, she believes, come from understanding what matters to employees, creating alignment around the mission and giving people the support they need to succeed.

“Healthcare is about more than changing outcomes. It’s about changing the experience—and building systems and teams that help people live as well and independently as possible.”