Rick Allen is a Dallas-area pharmacist and healthcare entrepreneur whose career has been defined by building people-centered companies and inspiring the people who operate those businesses. After earning his pharmacy degree from Southwestern Oklahoma State University, he began in community pharmacy in Garland, founded North Star Pharmacy in 1972, and spent the next two decades building pharmacy, vitamin, and infusion businesses across Garland, Richardson, Rockwall, Rowlett, and Dallas — including Lake Pointe Pharmacy and Option Care — and founded Dougherty’s Home Infusion, which under his leadership was taken public as Park Infusion Care.

Alongside that work, Allen was a founder and investor in Texas financial institutions. In 1985 he was an original founder and director of Texas Heritage Savings and Loan, formed under the last savings-and-loan charter granted in Texas. He remained on the board, as investor and director, as Texas Heritage merged without assistance into First Federal Savings, and as that institution was later rolled into Jefferson Heritage Savings Bank in St. Louis. He continued on the board after Jefferson Heritage merged into Union Planters, serving until 2004, when Union Planters merged into Regions Financial Corporation. He was also instrumental in the takeover of Synergy Bank, a distressed institution in Waco. In 2008 its headquarters were relocated to McKinney, where he served on the board until the bank was transferred to First Guaranty Bank, a publicly traded institution in Louisiana. Over the years he served a number of financial institutions as both investor and director.

In 2002 he co-founded Paragon Infusion Care with Joe Brayton. Over the following decade he built or acquired a family of related companies — therapy centers, hemophilia solutions, reimbursement, nutrition, staffing, and infusion centers — and in 2012 rolled them into Paragon Healthcare, Inc., the Dallas-based holding company he led as president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board through 2021. Paragon started with three people and grew to more than 1,500, becoming a national platform licensed in all fifty states, with 35 infusion centers and 19 infusion and specialty pharmacies.

His operating philosophy was consistent: take care of people first. Leaders cannot compel performance; they can only create the conditions in which people want to do excellent work. That approach produced both clinical growth and a durable culture that would define Paragon’s success. Trust and ethics sat at the center of it.

“You have to be able to trust your team to know the rules,” Allen said. “We demand that our team have ethical behavior. There’s really no right way to do it wrong.”

— Rick Allen

Paragon appeared on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies for multiple consecutive years and on the Dallas Business Journal Middle Market 50. The Dallas Morning News named it a Top 100 Place to Work in 2019 and 2020. In 2015 Allen was Southwest Region Winner and a national healthcare finalist in Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year program. In 2018 the Dallas Business Journal named him a Most Admired CEO.

In 2020 Paragon partnered with Peak Rock Capital. During that partnership the company doubled revenue and expanded its infusion-center footprint by roughly 400 percent. Allen semi-retired and stepped down as chief executive officer in January 2022, entrusting day-to-day leadership to a new CEO while remaining chairman of the board. He was the largest single shareholder when Elevance Health completed its acquisition of Paragon in March 2024, a transaction of more than $1 billion. Paragon was then folded into CarelonRx.

His commitment to people extends well beyond the company, and he has shared that work with his wife, Trisha Allen. For fifteen years he has served the American Heart Association. In that work, he and Trisha co-chaired Côté de Coeur in 2015 and again in 2025. He has also been an ardent supporter of Empower and contributes heavily to Folds of Honor. For him, giving back is not separate from leadership. It is an extension of it.

In recent years he and his Paragon partners, including Joe Brayton, brought that same builder’s instinct to Pickler Universe, a Dallas–Fort Worth indoor pickleball enterprise. The Carrollton club, opened in 2025, spans more than 111,000 square feet and 26 courts and is home facility and partner to Dallas Flash of Major League Pickleball, with a second DFW location under development. Since 2022 he has also stayed involved through Precipio LLC, WRAM Investments LLC, and True Farm Inc. The work he ranks first is closer to home: his grandchildren.

Ultimately, Rick Allen’s legacy is measured not only by the companies he has built, but by the people the companies served, the colleagues who worked alongside him, and the opportunities he created for others. His greatest accomplishment may be his ability to make people believe they can accomplish more together than they ever could alone.