ACEP Council Report From Denver MeetingDecember 2019
This year’s annual ACEP council meeting was held in Denver on October 25-26, followed by the Scientific Assembly October 27-30. Our added excitement in addition to the usual exciting council meeting was the snow blizzard that occurred October 28-29, necessitating some of us to travel home earlier to miss the blizzard but not miss getting back to work. Apparently we will not be going back to Denver anytime in the near future, at least if the meeting is held in the later part of October! Texas still remains the third largest chapter in the college, with 22 councilors. California and New York have more councilors than Texas. The Texas councilors for this year were: Drs. Carrie deMoor, Justin Fairless, Angela Fisher, Diana Fite, Juan Fitz, Andrea Green, Robert Greenberg, Robert Hancock, Doug Jeffrey, A.J. Kirk, Heidi Knowles, Eddie Kuo, Laura Medford-Davis, Dan Peckenpaugh, Lynn Rea, Marcus Sims, Nick Steinour, Theresa Tran, Gerad Troutman, Hemant Vankawala, Jim Williams, and Sandra Williams. Several of our elected councilors were unable to attend this year, so some alternate councilors temporarily moved up to councilors and they did an excellent job! We also had 17 alternate councilors in attendance, plus we have seats in our section for all ACEP Past Presidents who wish to attend (Dr. Bob Suter and Dr. Angela Gardner) plus ACEP past speaker (Dr.Arlo Weltge). Two Texans are on the ACEP Board of Directors: Dr. Alison Haddock and Dr. Gillian Schmitz. A total of 60 resolutions were considered at the council meeting, with several being commendation resolutions and several being memorial resolutions. Two resolutions were withdrawn, nine were not adopted, six were referred, and forty-five were adopted, many with amendments. Among those adopted was a resolution to eliminate the use of the word “provider” in all ACEP communications (unless required in a policy by law), with physicians being called physicians and other health care practitioners to be called by what their educational degree is in. Another resolution adopted was to write a policy that physician salaries and benefit packages should be equitable and transparent. A particularly timely resolution that passed was one requesting a study and report annually about the market penetration of non-physician ownership, namely private equity, insurance company ownership, hospital ownership, and corporate non-physician ownership and management of emergency groups, and particularly about the negative effects on emergency physicians and how ACEP can advocate for correction of negative effects to physicians and to the marketplace. Elections come at the end of the council meeting, and Dr. Mark Rosenberg of New Jersey was elected President-elect of the college. Dr. Gary Katz of Ohio moved up to Speaker, and Dr. Kelly Eurom-Gray from Florida was elected Vice-speaker. Dr. Gillian Schmitz (who is Texan but representing Government Services) was re-elected to the board. New board members elected were Dr. Jeffrey Goodloe (who has a lot of Texas ties, went to medical school in Texas and practiced here for a while, but is now from Oklahoma), and Dr. Ryan Stanton from Kentucky and Dr. Gabor Kelen (from Maryland but representing academic physicians). The highest award given by ACEP yearly is the John G. Wiegenstein Leadership Award. This year the award was given to a “new” Texan (she has been in Texas for several years now), Dr. Sandra Schneider, past ACEP president. Among previous Wiegenstein award winners have been quite a few Texans: Dr. Ken Gray, Dr. Leonard Riggs, Dr. Bob Suter, and Dr. Angela Gardner. Please feel free to e-mail me ([email protected]) or call/text me (713-301-3564) if you wish to discuss this report. |
