Henry Z. Pitzele, MD, FACEP

Current Professional Positions: attending physician, Jesse Brown VA Medical Center and Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, Chicago; attending physician, Mesa View Regional Medical Center, Mesquite, Nevada

Internships and Residency: emergency medicine residency, University of Illinois at Chicago

Medical Degree: MD, University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine (2000)

Response

For me, the most important of the College’s missions has always been advocacy. Within the advocacy pillar of the strategic plan, several of the strategies resonate with me, specifically the plans to standardize advocacy strategies across the federal, state, and workplace levels. To that end, a few of us in the State Legislative/Regulatory Committee have begun a project which we think will help meet these goals—a dashboard of the most common legislative hurdles faced by all of us. Each ACEP member will (once we are up and running) be able to look at this dashboard and see how each state has handled the most common legislative issues (Medicaid, scope, unfunded mandates, etc.); if one of us has had a winning strategy, others won’t have to reinvent the wheel—they’ll be able to reach out to the stakeholders in the chapter that has done well and use some of those strategies themselves. We think that this will not only help us meet our legislative goals but will help unify the College when members see all of the work that is being done on their behalf.

Secondly, I want to highlight the final strut in the Advocacy pillar—that of creating awareness around the business of EM. I feel very strongly that the interests of the major EM corporations do not align with the interests of the frontline EP, and I want ACEP to be very clear, to one and all, that the mission of the College is to better the working lives of those frontline docs. I am quite proud of what the College has done already this year, not just the act of adopting the strategic plan to reaffirm our mission to support individual EPs, but on this particular objective of creating awareness of the interests of business. In one of the most important months of ACEP’s recent history, we filed an amicus brief supporting AAEM’s lawsuit about the corporate practice of medicine, the Board came out with a statement about private equity in EM, and we wrote a letter to the FTC/DOJ perfectly and succinctly summarizing how corporate interests are eroding the specialty and negatively affecting both docs and patients. I can’t really express what a Mjolnir-esque blow these three back-to-back events had–not just to EM as a specialty, but to me personally. They showed in the most public way, to our members, and to those watching outside that ACEP is here for us, not for an industry enriched by our blood and sweat. The College represents us. Now, do I feel like these three momentous events mean that our work on this issue is done? Absolutely not! It’s merely a starting point–and a very encouraging one–and it means that, if we continue in this vein, and keep making change, this College can and will be the unifying force through which together, emergency physicians can make the next phase of EM a place in which we truly look forward to working.