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Dan Buffington Receives Burgess L. Gordon Memorial Award
Alexandria, Virginia - December 13, 2004 In recognition of his participation in the Drug Infusion Work Group (DIWG), Dan Buffington, Pharm.D., MBA, was presented the Burgess L. Gordon Memorial Award by the American Medical Association (AMA). The presentation was made during the AMA's Current Procedural Terminology/Health Care Professionals Advisory Committee (CPT/HCPAC) meeting November 5.
The award is named in honor of former AMA vice president, Dr. Burgess L. Gordon, who was responsible for the initial development of CPT or the uniform language used by health care providers and payers nationwide to communicate health care services, tests, and procedures in the electronic data interchange (EDI) health encounter/claims processing and payment environment. AMA established the award in 1996 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of CPT.
The DIWG was formed to improve coding for parenteral drug administration and related services. Dr. Buffington, the only non-physician member, was one of six members of the DIWG to receive this award presented by Dr. Tracy Gordy, chair of the CPT Editorial Panel. The other CPT Advisory Panel Representative members of this group were Joel Brill, M.D. (American Gastroenterological Association), Robert Lloyd, M.D., (American College of Rheumatology), Lawrence P. Martinelli, M.D. (Infectious Disease Society of America), W. Charles Penley, M.D. (American Society of Clinical Oncology), and Samuel M. Silver, M.D., Ph.D. (American Society of Hematology). The DIWG members were recognized for their swiftness and cooperation in dealing with the complex aspects of parenteral drug administration coding.
Buffington is currently the director of Clinical Pharmacology Services in Tampa, Florida, and clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He earned his Pharm.D. and MBA degrees at Mercer University and performed postgraduate work at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. He is very active in national and state pharmacy affairs.
Buffington is the Pharmacist Services Technical Advisory Coalition (PS-TAC) representative to the AMA HCPAC, which represents non-physician health professionals in the AMA's CPT Editorial Panel process.
The pharmacy associations that comprise the Coalition are: the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP), the American Pharmacists Association (APhA), the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists (ASCP), the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists (IACP), the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS), and the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA).
The Pharmacist Services Technical Advisory Coalition was founded in 2002 to improve the coding infrastructure necessary to support billing for pharmacists' professional services. The Coalition works to provide the national leadership necessary to position and secure pharmacy's place in the electronic data interchange (EDI) health encounter/claims processing and payment environment concerning all health care providers' professional services.
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