Buffington Honored With American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Award Of Excellence

Main Category: Pharmacy / Pharmacist
Article Date: 12 Jun 2008 - 0:00 PDT

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The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) honored Daniel E. Buffington, Pharm.D., M.B.A., with the esteemed ASHP Board of Directors Award of Excellence for his work to develop payment models that will appropriately reimburse pharmacists for their therapy-management services. Buffington, president and chief executive officer of Clinical Pharmacology Services (CPS) in Tampa, Fla., received the award during ASHP's Summer Meeting in Seattle.

Buffington is founder of Clinical Pharmacology Services (CPS), a multi-specialty group practice that provides patient care services and operates as a clinical research center and training site for medical and pharmacy students. He is also a clinical faculty member at the University of South Florida College of Medicine. Previously, he held a full-time faculty position at that university, where he helped develop the Division of Clinical Pharmacology, conducted clinical research and managed clinical services. He began his career as a clinical pharmacist at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute in Tampa.

Throughout his career, Buffington has actively participated in several nationwide collaborative initiatives and organizations that deal with reimbursement for clinical pharmacy services, including the Pharmacist Services Technical Advisory Coalition, where he represents ASHP and was instrumental in securing the approval of permanent CPT codes for medication therapy management services. Buffington was also active on the American Medical Association's Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) Panel and the CPT Allied Health Committee.

"Dr. Buffington's commitment to seeking reimbursement for clinical pharmacy services has moved health-system pharmacy forward and increased awareness that pharmacists are medication-use experts who are equipped with extensive clinical knowledge," said ASHP President Janet A. Silvester, M.B.A., FASHP.

As a consultant to other pharmacists and healthcare institutions, Buffington helps to shape advanced practice models, clinical services and the overall future of the pharmacy profession. In presentations to participants in medical, nursing and pharmacy continuing education programs, Buffington underscores the value pharmacists bring to healthcare teams. He has spoken as a pharmacy expert in many radio, television, and newspaper interviews, discussing topics involving medication therapy management and clinical pharmacy services.

Buffington received his Pharm.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Mercer University in Atlanta and completed a general residency and clinical pharmacology fellowship at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

About ASHP

For more than 60 years, ASHP has helped pharmacists who practice in hospitals and health systems improve medication use and enhance patient safety. The Society's 30,000 members include pharmacists and pharmacy technicians who practice in inpatient, outpatient, home-care, and long-term-care settings, as well as pharmacy students. For more information about the wide array of ASHP activities and the many ways in which pharmacists help people make the best use of medicines, visit ASHP's Web site, http://www.ashp.org, or its consumer Web site, http://www.safemedication.com.

http://www.ashp.org