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In the summer of 2018, Dr. Paul Kivela, ACEP’s president at that time, expressed interest in exploring the future of emergency medicine (EM) practice. There were many concerns, including the economics of practice, future workforce needs, the role of physician assistants (PAs) and nurse practitioners (NPs), the consolidation of the employment market, to name just a few. To determine the most important first steps in this discussion, Dr. Kivela appointed a Board-level workgroup to discuss the issues and suggest the first steps.
Dr. Kivela appointed Christopher Kang, MD, FACEP to serve as chair. Others appointed to the workgroup were James Augustine, MD, FACEP; Nida Degesys, MD; Alison Haddock, MD, FACEP; Kevin Klauer, DO, EJD, FACEP; and Debra Perina, MD, FACEP. Dr. Sandra Schneider served as staff liaison.
The workgroup recommended that ACEP develop a multi-organizational task force to assess the current and future EM workforce. They also recommended that ACEP contract with an outside expert to review the literature and existing data on current and projected emergency medicine workforce needs and provide ACEP and EM, in general, with an assessment of the future EM workforce. Since this was a multi-organizational task force and the cost of the expert analysis would be considerable, each organization would be asked to provide $8000 per year for two years to offset the cost of the study. ACEP would absorb the cost of the study and task force logistics beyond the support provided.
Task force appointed – Nov 2018
Face to face task force meeting with Mr. Salsberg - Jan 2019
Interim report delivered by Mr. Salsberg to the group - ACEP 19
Final report delivered by Mr. Salsberg to the group - ACEP 20
Face to face to discuss the report and determine future actions - Jan 2021
The following organizations agreed to support the task force, and their representatives are below:
ABEM – Robert Muelleman, MD, FACEP; Earl Reisdorff, MD, FACEP
ACEP – Catherine Marco, MD, FACEP - Chair
ACOEP – Robert Suter, DO, MHA, FACEP
AOBEM – Bradley Chappell, DO, MHA
CORD – Fiona Gallahue, MD
EMRA – Nathan Vafaie, MD, MBA
SAEM – Mark Courtney, MD, MSCI, FACEP
The following organizations were invited but declined:
AACEM
AAEM
AAEM/RSA
SAEM/RAMS
AAENP (Dian Evans, PhD, FNP-BC, ENP-C, FAAN, FAANP) and SEMPA (Michelle Parker) were invited to join in the conversation, recognizing that PAs/NPs are not physicians, but that they are members of the team providing care in the ED. They are non-voting.
Mr. Edward Salsberg, noted authority on physician workforce, is contracted to ACEP and is performing the data analysis. His team surveyed graduating emergency residents and fellows this past May to gauge the job market. The response rate was 25%.