2021 ACEP Council Meeting
This year’s annual ACEP council meeting was held in Boston (as well as on zoom for a few of the councilors) on October 22-23 followed by the Scientific Assembly October 24-27. What a fantastic meeting this was, especially for our Texas delegation, with more resolutions than there have ever been plus multiple Texans winning awards and leadership positions with ACEP! The highlight of this year’s Council meeting was Texan Dr. Gillian Schmitz taking over as ACEP president for 2021-2022! She gave an excellent acceptance speech which can be accessed on the internet and is well worth the effort to listen to. Dr. Schmitz represents the Government Services section, and she practices in San Antonio at Brooke Army Medical Center. But additional highlights of this year’s meeting were that Dr. Alison Haddock was elected to be chair of the ACEP Board of Directors and Dr. Heidi Knowles won her election to the ACEP Board of Directors! Additional election winners were Dr. Christopher Kang from Washington state elected as president-elect; Dr. Kelly Gray-Eurom from Florida elected to position of Speaker; Dr. Melissa Costello from Alabama elected as Vice Speaker; and other board members elected in addition to Dr. Knowles were Dr. L. Anthony (Tony) Cirillo, incumbent, from Rhode Island, Dr. J.T. Finnell II, incumbent, from Indiana, and Dr. Rami Khoury from Michigan. Texas continues to be the third largest chapter in the college, with 22 councilors. Our councilors run for their positions every other year during our TCEP annual business meeting. There is a requirement that in order to run for councilor, the TCEP member must have served as an alternate councilor for a minimum of two years. (An exception is that the president of TCEP automatically serves as a councilor during the year that he or she is the president.) The alternate councilors are appointed by the TCEP Board of Directors. If a councilor cannot attend the council meeting for an emergency reason or excused absence, then an alternate councilor will temporarily sit for the absent councilor, and there is an order based on seniority of time served from which to pick the alternate who will sit as a councilor. The Texas councilors for this year were: Drs. Sara Andrabi, Carrie deMoor, Diana Fite, Andrea Green (Jessica Best sitting in), Robert Greenberg, Robert Hancock, Doug Jeffrey, A.J. Kirk, Heidi Knowles, Jason Lesnick, Laura Medford-Davis, Sterling Overstreet, Heather Owen, Anant Patel, Dan Peckenpaugh, Lynn Rea, Rick Robinson, Marcus Sims (Eddie Kuo sitting in), Theresa Tran (Hilary Fairbrother sitting in), Gerad Troutman, Jim Williams, and Sandra Williams. We also had multiple alternate councilors in attendance. A total of 82 resolutions were considered at the council meeting, with several being commendation resolutions and several being memorial resolutions. Among resolutions not adopted were ACEP President-Elect selected directly by members, conditional support for Medicare-for-All, patients’ right to board certified EP 24/7 and several others. Examples of resolutions that were adopted or referred for more study were having another ACEP report card of each of the states, family and medical leave, forced EMS diversion, diversity issues, media marketing of value of EM Board certification, employment retaliation, whistleblower, wrongful termination, financial incentives to reduce ED boarding, complications of marijuana use, and defining the description of an emergency physician. One of the memorial resolutions honored our own Dr. Juan Fitz who passed away in Lubbock on November 3, 2020, from Covid illness. The resolution was framed and presented to TCEP and then sent on to Dr. Fitz’s family. And now for the awards! Several well-deserving wonderful Texas emergency physicians were honored at the council meeting, and I am certain we have never had so many awardees and elected Texans before in one year! Congratulations to Dr. Robert Hancock for Spokesperson of the Year Award; Dr. Hilary Fairbrother for Council Horizon Award; Dr. Craig A. Manifold for Outstanding Contribution to EMS Award (posthumously); Dr. Ahamed H. Idris for Outstanding Contribution to Research Award; and Dr. Sara Andrabi for National EM Junior Faculty Teaching Award. (Also Dr. Angela Gardner won the 911 Network Member of the Year at the 2021 Leadership and Advocacy Conference.) Please feel free to e-mail me ([email protected]) or call/text me (713-301-3564) if you wish to discuss this report.
|
