Dr. Skipper is the Medical Director of the Alabama Physician Health Program and Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Alabama School of Medicine. He is certified in Internal Medicine and is a Fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. Dr. Skipper has worked in the arena of physician health and medical staff administration for more than 25 years.

He is a certified Medical Review Officer and is internationally recognized as an expert in drug testing and toxicology. Prior to returning to his home state of Alabama in 1999 he was Medical Director of Springbrook NW, an evaluation program and treatment center in Oregon, and on the faculty at the Oregon Health Sciences University for twenty years. While there he introduced an Addiction Medicine curriculum into the medical school and helped develop the first Addiction Medicine Fellowship.

Dr. Skipper was appointed in 2002 by the Secretary of HHS to the National Advisory Council overseeing Drug Treatment in the United States and to the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research overseeing policies regarding drugs of abuse. He is on the Board of Directors of the Council on Substance Abuse, and the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.

Dr. Skipper worked with the Federation of State Medical Boards and developed and moderated two national 6 week, nine hour, web seminars for Medical Regulatory Board members in 2006 and 2007, both available on CD: 1) Professional Sexual Misconduct: Prevention, Early Detection and Treatment and, 2) An Epidemic of Disruptive Behavior among Physicians –Clinical, Legal and Disciplinary Perspectives. Both of these seminars have won acclaim.

Dr. Skipper helped innovate and develop ethylglucuronide, EtG, testing in the United States, and has published and testified widely regarding this new test. He maintains an informational website, www.ethylglucuronide.com, regarding the test. Dr. Skipper is a Principle Investigator in a National Study of Physician Health Programs in the United States, sponsored by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant. This study aims to analyze the structure and function of Physician Health Programs and to assess their effectiveness with an eye toward utilizing components of these model programs to enhance treatment outcomes.

Dr. Skipper has published widely in Addiction Medicine both in books and peer review journals and speaks frequently, both nationally and internationally, regarding various aspects of addiction treatment, drug testing, ethics, and behavior among professionals. He has appeared on the Jim Lehrer News Hour, the Today Show, and other media venues and has been featured as an expert on drug testing in the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers.