The Chapter and State Relations Department offers a state legislative tracking service that chapters can utilize free of charge.

ACEP uses the service to search for state legislation that contains any of several key words related to high priority issues facing emergency medicine.  The service identifies and tracks the progress of bills that contain these key words, and then produces state-specific summary reports that ACEP can forward to chapters.  Key word searches are conducted in categories that include:

Any bill containing the words emergency department or emergency physician
Liability reform
Physician reimbursement
Private payer issues such as balance billing and assignment of benefits
Health care reform
Seat belts/motor vehicle safety
Motorcycle helmets

We can also search for any specific topic a chapter might be interested in tracking.

Of course, key word searches have some limitations. There may be legislation introduced that is of interest to a chapter that uses words other than the key words we're searching. If that is the case, the system will not provide us with that bill. We are also limited in the amount of legislation we can sort through, so we are not able to focus on a wider range of legislative topics that might be of general interest. 

With that in mind, chapters should not rely completely on this system to identify every bill that you might be interested in. Utilizing other sources (lobbyists, legislative contacts, state medical societies, news outlets, etc.) is still highly recommended to help ensure you stay on top of key legislative developments.

However, we do believe this system can be helpful in augmenting your legislative tracking efforts...particularly for those chapters that have little or no ongoing presence in their state legislatures.

Participating chapters can receive weekly reports while their legislatures are in session.  These reports provide summaries of identified and tracked bills in their state, along with any progress those bills have made in the legislative process. 

Chapters will also be provided with a link to their legislative web site where they can see the entire text of any tracked bill.

Once again the service is free to chapters.  If your chapter is interested in utilizing the service, please contact Harry Monroe in the Chapter and State Relations Department at hmonroe@acep.org.