Emergency medicine is critical at any hour of any day. It must be there when you need it.

Emergency medicine is essential to America, providing lifesaving and critical care to millions of patients each year. (CDC 2010)

• Two-thirds of emergency visits occur after business hours, when your doctor’s office is closed. (CDC 2010)
• Emergency physicians are at the front lines of any disaster, whether it’s a multi-car crash on the highway or a shooting at a mall.
• Emergency physicians save lives every day. You never know when you will need emergency care.
• Emergency physicians are there for any one at any time for any reason.

America’s emergency departments are under severe stress, facing soaring demands. They are essential to every community and must have adequate resources.

• The crisis in emergency care is everyone’s problem: One emergency can affect an entire family.
• Demand for emergency care has grown at twice the rate of the U.S. population) — hundreds of emergency departments have closed. (JAMA 2010; CDC 2010)
• Emergency care is efficient, managing to treat more than 120 million of the sickest patients each year using only 2 percent of the health care dollar — we need more resources, not less.
• Despite our best efforts, the average wait time for a patient needing care in 1 to 14 minutes is 37 minutes, a dangerous delay for the sickest patients (GAO 2009).
• Hospitals can reduce emergency room gridlock by quickly moving emergency patients to their inpatient beds once they have been admitted to the hospital.

Emergency physicians are dedicated specialists who mobilize resources to diagnose and treat every kind of medical emergency.

• Emergency physicians are critical to our communities. We are all a heartbeat away from needing emergency care.
• Emergency physicians treat patients of all ages, of all incomes and all kinds of medical conditions.
• Emergency physicians efficiently command the resources of a hospital to provide the best care for patients.
• Emergency physicians have more training in pediatric emergencies than anyone else, including pediatricians.

ACEP is advancing emergency care so that every patient gets the best possible care when it’s needed most.

• ACEP educates emergency physicians and develops evidence-based policies to help doctors provide the best care for their patients.
• ACEP is a leader in educating the public about illness and injury prevention.
• ACEP members conduct and publish emergency medicine research in leading medical journals, including Annals of Emergency Medicine.
• Through its research foundation (EMF), ACEP supports emergency physicians in pioneering new treatments and technologies to improve the evolving practice of emergency medicine.
• Emergency physicians successfully lobbied Congress to enact a national “prudent layperson standard” as part of health care reform.