Danial Baker, Pharm.D., was appointed to a five-year term on the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention’s Healthcare Quality Expert Committee. He began his term this month and will attend his first committee meeting from July 20-21 in Rockville, Maryland.
“This opportunity makes it possible to make formulary recommendations that effect all patients covered by Medicare and help advance the quality of care for all of the citizens of the United States,” said Baker. “These same principles can then be shared with our student pharmacists at WSU, so they can better understand formulary systems and provide the best quality care for their patients.”
The U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) is the organization that has been responsible for ensuring the quality of America’s drug supply since 1820. The USP sets the standards that regulate the strength, quality and purity of medicines, food ingredients and dietary supplements manufactured and sold worldwide in more than 140 countries. Within the United States, these standards are enforced by the Food and Drug Administration.
Baker has over 20 years of experience serving on various pharmacy and therapeutics committees involved in making decisions for populations of patients—ranging from thousands to millions of individuals—at the regional, state and national level. Last October, Baker was appointed to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Arthritis Advisory Committee. At the USP, he will be contributing to the development of programs and guidelines that impact the citizens of the United States and the world, he said.
Baker is an associate dean and professor at the WSU College of Pharmacy. He also serves as the director of the WSU Drug Information Center in Spokane, Washington. He has been a faculty member at WSU for 32 years.
He has been a member of the USP since 1987, and has served in the past as a consultant to the Healthcare Quality Expert Committee on several occasions, said Baker.
“While at the 2015 USP Convention I was asked by a colleague why I wasn’t a member of the expert committee, so I submitted my application once the convention was over,” he said.
On the expert committee, he will be one of 25 health care experts, including government liaisons, from across the nation. Their function is to create and/or revise the health care quality standards that support the U.S. National Quality Strategy, continuously revise the USP Medicare Model Guidelines, and address other current public health needs.
The National Quality Strategy, established as part of the Affordable Care Act, is a report to Congress first published in 2011 through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It serves as a set of guidelines for measuring health care quality and quality improvement efforts nationwide and supports the ACA’s goal to provide better, more affordable health care for all Americans.
[July 13, 2015] By: Lori J. Maricle