2008 Pinnacle Award Recipients Announced - American Pharmacists Association Foundation

Main Category: Pharmacy / Pharmacist
Article Date: 26 May 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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The American Pharmacists Association (APhA) Foundation is pleased to announce the winners of the eleventh annual Pinnacle Awards: Recognizing Contributions to Health Care Quality through the Medication Use Process. The awards dinner will be held on June 24, 2008 at the Embassy of Italy in Washington, D.C.

The Pinnacle Awards are administered by the APhA Foundation's Quality Center and are made possible through a grant from Wyeth. These awards were inspired by and created in response to the increasing importance of the proper use of medications in today's health care environment. Morbidity and mortality associated with improper medication use is a major public health problem, resulting in significant disability and up to 100,000 deaths each year. An estimated 177 billion dollars is spent annually on preventable hospitalizations, lengthened stays, and/or prolonged treatment as a result of prescribing contraindicated therapy, drug-drug interactions, adverse drug reactions, duplication of drug therapy, and/or errors in drug administration.

"This year's award recipients show that, despite the challenges we face in the U.S. health care system, significant improvements are possible," said William M. Ellis, APhA Foundation Executive Director and CEO. "The 2008 Pinnacle Award recipients are champions of bold and innovative approaches to improving our nation's health, and the APhA Foundation is pleased to recognize their outstanding work."

The 2008 Pinnacle Award recipients are:

Individual Award for Career Achievement
Daniel E. Buffington
Tampa, FL

Daniel. E. Buffington received his Doctor of Pharmacy degree and a Masters of Business Administration degree from Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. Buffington is recognized for the development of a pharmacist-managed collaborative practice model providing medication therapy management services to patients who utilize chronic or high risk medication therapies. Demand for these model collaborative practice services in patients with complex drug-related needs has expanded to encompass the unmet drug therapy needs of employers, insurers, physicians and health care organizations, as well as in the fields of education, clinical trials research and health care law. Dr. Buffington's capstone contribution to improving medication use quality is his work with the American Medical Association (AMA) to include pharmacists' medication therapy management services in the CPT health care reporting system. In 2003, the AMA Board of Trustees approved Dr. Buffington as Pharmacy's first official representative in the CPT process.

Group Practice-Health System-Corporation Award
Ukrop's Pharmacy Immunization Program
Richmond, VA

Ukrop's Supermarket is a local family-owned grocery store chain with 30 stores including 24 pharmacies in the greater Richmond area. Ukrop Pharmacy's mission is to help their customers live healthier, happier and longer lives. The purpose of the immunization program is to incorporate preventive services to help achieve this goal. The Ukrop Pharmacy's immunization program was started in 1998 and has grown from the provision of influenza and pneumococcal vaccines for adult patients to immunizations across the lifespan and a comprehensive pre-travel medicine program. Since starting the program Ukrop's pharmacists have administered over 200,000 immunizations including a program called Shots for Tots that has provided immunizations to 2,500 children of whom 90-95% are uninsured.

Government Agency-Nonprofit Organization-Association Award
National Diabetes Education Program
Washington, DC

The National Diabetes Education Program (NDEP) and its 200 partner organizations, are working together to reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with diabetes. NDEP began in 1997 with one message: that diabetes is serious, common, costly, but controllable. Ten years later NDEP is still spreading the word, having added the dynamic new message that type 2 diabetes can be prevented or delayed. In 1997, only 9 percent of Americans reported that they believed diabetes was a serious disease. A 2006 NDEP survey found that 89% of Americans now believe diabetes is serious. More than 10 million NDEP brochures and tip sheets have been distributed and although America has more people diagnosed with diabetes, people with diabetes have better AIC, blood pressure, and cholesterol values than they did a decade ago. This extraordinary

achievement sets the stage for the next phase of NDEP's work, empowering Americans to take action to better control and ultimately prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes.

About the APhA Foundation

The APhA Foundation is affiliated with the American Pharmacists Association, the national professional society of pharmacists in the U.S. The APhA Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., works to design solutions to medication use problems in America. The APhA Foundation's mission is to improve the quality of consumer health outcomes affected by pharmacy.

http://www.aphanet.org

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