2024 ACEP Council Meeting
This year’s annual ACEP council meeting was held in Las Vegas on September 27-28, 2024. The council meeting always meets for two days before the ACEP annual meeting (formerly called Scientific Assembly). This year there were 422 councilors from all state chapters, sections of ACEP, EMRA (Emergency Medicine Residents Association), SAEM (Society of Academic Emergency Medicine, and CORD (Council of Residency Directors). Texas brings 21 of the councilors. We had 71 resolutions this year to discuss and vote on, but a few of the resolutions were memorial resolutions, which included this year a memorial resolution for Dr. Veronica Greer of El Paso. In addition to considering and voting on resolutions, an important part of the council meeting is election to the Board of Directors (4 run each year with the possibility of holding up to 2 terms of three years each) and the president-elect. Every other year, we also elect a speaker and vice-speaker, but that was not this year. Of interest is that this year is the first year ever that the four elected board members were all female, including our own Dr. Heidi Knowles, who ran for her second term. Out of three candidates for president-elect, Dr. Tony Cirillo was elected. Also, Dr. Alison Haddock became ACEP president during the council meeting. She was elected from Texas, but since then has moved to Washington state. As you can imagine, the resolutions run the gamut of issues affecting emergency medicine. One bylaws resolution changed the way we calculate the number of councilors for each chapter. In the past, the calculation was based on the number of members as of December 31 (one councilor for each state then an additional councilor for each 100 additional members). Now it will be calculated based on the number of members on the first day of each month, adding each month’s totals and dividing by 12. This calculation for the past year would have given us 22 councilors instead of 21, so it might end up being to our advantage. Another resolution that passed calls for ACEP to formally request that appropriate federal government agencies investigate whether health insurers and hospitals violate antitrust laws by requiring emergency physicians to be in-network as a condition for our contract to work. I can email you a synopsis of all the resolutions and their outcomes if you contact me. The Texas councilors for this year were: Drs. Sara Andrabi, Jessica Best, Angela Cornelius, Bryan Dunn, Diana Fite, Andrea Green, Robert Greenberg, Robert Hancock, Doug Jeffrey, A.J. Kirk, Ira Nemeth, Sterling Overstreet, Heather Owen, Anant Patel, Dan Peckenpaugh, Lynn Rea, Rick Robinson, Marcus Sims, Gerad Troutman, Jim Williams, and Sandra Williams. We also had several alternate councilors in attendance, including Drs. Trisha Anest, Chinwe Anyanwu, Michael Baillio, Lydia Bennett, Carrie de Moor, Hilary Fairbrother, Joshua Farnsworth, Ben Leeson, Jeff Pinnow, Robert Rosillo, Sachin Santhakumar, Stephanie Onyechi, Theresa Tran, and Brianna Wapples. Dr. Angela Gardner (who also sits as an alternate delegate) and Dr. Bob Suter sat with our delegation as past presidents of ACEP, which gives them a forever seat in the council but they do not have a vote. Our councilors, of whom half are elected every year at the TCEP annual meeting, and our alternate councilors who are appointed by our board of directors, pay their own way including hotel accommodations to the council meeting. There is no reimbursement from TCEP. Next year's council meeting will be on September 5-6, 2025, in Salt Lake City, UT. Please feel free to e-mail me ([email protected]) or call/text me (713-301-3564) if you wish to discuss this report. |
