Each October at ACEP’s annual Council meeting, the ACEP Council elects new leaders for the College. The Council, which represents all 53 chapters, 37 sections of membership, the Association of Academic Chairs in Emergency Medicine, the Council of Emergency Medicine Residency Directors (CORD), the Emergency Medicine Residents’ Association (EMRA), and the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, will elect the College’s President-Elect, four members to the ACEP Board of Directors, and the Council Vice Speaker. This month, we’ll meet the Board of Directors candidates, and in October, we’ll meet the Council Officer candidates.

Platform Statements

The following members are candidates for Board of Directors. They responded to this question:

How will your skills, background, knowledge, or unique abilities help you as a member of the Board to address the major issues facing emergency medicine in the next three years?

Stephen Huntley Anderson, MD, FACEP (incumbent, Washington)

Current Professional Positions: staff emergency department physician, MultiCare Auburn Medical Center, Auburn, Washington
Internships and Residency: internship/residency, general surgery, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; chief resident, University of Michigan; University of Washington, Seattle
Medical Degree: MD, University of Michigan (1981)

Response

Experience, passion, and a commitment to the future define my skills set for the Board. For over 30 years, I’ve practiced emergency medicine and devoted myself as a department chairman, chair of education, and chief of staff at my hospital. I honed the abilities to prove the value of emergency medicine to my partners and colleagues. Leadership in your own shop focuses your commitment while teaching you the value of teamwork that works across all lines of service. What’s best at the gurney needs to be the easy solution hospital-wide (be it EHRs, boarding, or continuity of care). I’m grounded in my patients’ best interests.

With many of our strategic battles now being waged on the state level with Medicaid and insurance companies, I’ve fought and won against flawed policy at that level. Having found win-win solutions by developing a care coordination program in Washington that is now a blueprint nationally for other state programs, I understand how to stand up for prudent layperson access to care while achieving better health outcomes, increased provider satisfaction, and saving money. We don’t need more roadblocks or revolving doors; we need more tools like we created with the Washington State 7 Best Practices that I co-wrote.

That experience and passion got me elected to the Board three years ago. There, we created the Clinical Emergency Data Registry (CEDR) (to augment reimbursement while owning our metrics), created a Diversity and Inclusion Task Force (to remove obstacles to success), and fought balance billing and the flawed policies of the American Health Care Act. I was honored to give the Colin Rorrie Health Policy lecture on coordinating care at ACEP15. Through these and countless other battles, I worked tirelessly to find solutions for over the last three years on the Board.