Apply Today to Win the 2026 ACEP QI Challenge

Have you developed an impactful and creative way to address disparities in care in your emergency department?

Perhaps your team has come up with a unique way to incorporate innovative technologies?

Share your solutions and showcase your department’s commitment to quality improvement by joining the ACEP QI Challenge.

The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) QI Challenge is designed to recognize and highlight impactful quality improvement (QI) and patient safety initiatives within emergency medicine.

Organized by ACEP’s Quality & Patient Safety Committee along with the Section of Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, the challenge emphasizes projects that demonstrate strong improvement science methodology and meaningful outcomes.

Submissions are evaluated using a standardized scoring rubric. Projects are judged based on:

Overall impact on patient care or system performance
Relevance and scalability to other departments or institutions
Rigor and application of improvement science methods
To be eligible, projects must have been completed within the past two years.

Top three projects will be selected for recognition. Winners will be honored at ACEP26 and featured in the QIPS Section newsletter as well as other ACEP communication channels.

Applications are due June 27th 2026

Get Inspired by the 2023 ACEP QI Challenge Award Winners

Reducing Disparities: Lost in Interpretation: Addressing Gaps in Interpreter Use Documentation

Elaine Hsiang, MD; Carolina Ornelas-Dorian, MD; Jaskaran Bains, MD; Kaitlin DeWilde, MD; Jaskirat Dhanoa, MD; Katrin Jaradeh, MD

University of California, San Francisco

The UCSF team developed and implemented a built-in smartphrase into ED physician note templates to increase the practice of documenting certified interpreter use to improve access to and expanding interpreter use capabilities.

Choosing Wisely: Developing a Standardized Method to Identify Patients Appropriate for Peer Review in Two Mid-Sized Community Emergency Departments

Katherine Sebald, PA-C

Mayo Clinic, MN

The Mayo team conducted a study to identify and improve the number of ED cases within two mid-sized community EDs that would benefit from a formal peer review but were originally missed through current reporting practices aiming to standardize methods utilized to identify cases appropriate for review.

Resident/Fellow: Strengthening Sepsis Care at a tertiary care teaching hospital in New Delhi, India

Charu Malhotra, MBBS

All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India

The New Delhi team developed a sepsis screening tool and protocol deployed at triage which increased blood culture rates and reduced door-to-antibiotic time where ED patients identified needing antibiotics received them within 60 minutes of arrival increased from 7.5% to 55.8%.