2020 ACEP Council MeetingThis year’s annual ACEP council meeting was held in Zoom and Lumi platforms on October 24-25 followed by the Zoom Scientific Assembly October 26-29. Considering how difficult it was to arrange this large council meeting with over 700 participants, the meeting was a success given the online venue and some natural limitations. There was some debate of the resolutions, but nothing compared to usual! And we very much missed seeing colleagues in person, which is also how a lot of discussions and negotiations take place. There were a total of 443 councilors. By far the highlight of this year’s Council meeting was Dr. Alison Haddock being re-elected to the ACEP Board of Directors, and Dr. Gillian Schmitz (practices in Texas but representing Government Services) being elected to President-Elect of ACEP! Texas is proud to be the third largest chapter in the college, with 22 councilors. It has only been in the last few years that we moved up to #3! Only California and New York have more councilors than Texas. The Texas councilors for this year were: Drs. Sara Andrabi, Carrie deMoor, Angela Fisher, Diana Fite, Andrea Green, Robert Greenberg, Robert Hancock, Doug Jeffrey, A.J. Kirk, Heidi Knowles, Laura Medford-Davis, Sterling Overstreet, Heather Owen, Anant Patel, Dan Peckenpaugh, Lynn Rea, Rick Robinson, Marcus Sims, Theresa Tran, Gerad Troutman, Jim Williams, and Sandra Williams. We also had multiple alternate councilors in attendance. Sadly, Dr. Juan Fitz was to be a councilor but was in the ICU in Lubbock with COVID-19 during the council meeting and ultimately passed away on November 3. A total of 58 resolutions were considered at the council meeting, with several being commendation resolutions and several being memorial resolutions. As we would anticipate, the majority of the non-memorial and non-commendation resolutions had to do with Covid-related issues, particularly availability of PPE, loss of insurance coverage, and use of telemedicine. Also resolutions about health care equity and creating a culture of anti-discrimination were prevalent, and resolutions about due process in EM, employment information, the corporate practice of medicine, and billing and collections transparency in EM were discussed. Another resolution discussed at length was about honoring employment contracts for graduating emergency medicine residents, a particularly hot topic since many residents suddenly found their expected jobs disappear due to the pandemic. The majority of the resolutions were passed, many with amendments. Of those that did not pass, some simply did not pass because ACEP already had policy in place that supported the gist of the resolution. Please feel free to contact me if you want details about the outcome of any particular resolution.
One of the memorial resolutions honored Brigadier General, USAF (RET) (BVT), Craig Manifold, DO, FACEP, FAAEM, FAEMS, of Texas, and was presented by TCEP as well as Government Services. Dr. Manifold passed away unexpectedly at the age of 57 on September 20, 2020. We already mentioned the election outcomes of Dr. Alison Haddock, re-elected to the ACEP Board of Directors, and she was also elected within the board as Vice-President. And we mentioned Dr. Gillian Schmitz being elected by the Council as our new President-Elect of ACEP! Also elected to the Board of Directors were Dr. Aisha Terry of Washington, D.C., who was an incumbent; as well as new board members Dr. James Shoemaker, Jr. of Indiana, and Dr. Arvind Venkat of Pennsylvania. And this report would be sorely remiss if we did not congratulate all the Texans who won awards this year! Congratulations to Dr. James Atkins for Outstanding Contribution in EMS award, Dr. Andrea Green for ACEP Council Champion of Diversity and Inclusion award, and Dr. Theresa Tran for ACEP Council Horizon award.
What an incredible year this has been for Texas emergency physicians and TCEP! Please feel free to e-mail me ([email protected]) or call/text me (713-301-3564) if you wish to discuss this report. Diana Fite, MD, FACEP |
