Dr. Dark: What can you tell the members about leadership and diversity at that level of the ACEP Board?

ACEP’s 53rd President, Dr. Aisha Terry of Washington, DC, began her one-year term in October 2023. (Click to enlarge.)

Dr. Terry: My fellow Board members are amazing. We are a group of 15 individuals who are incredibly passionate about our specialty, about our College, committed, and we work incredibly hard around the robust agenda that ACEP has. I have the pleasure of working with a Board of Directors who are talented, diverse, from various backgrounds, from various types of professional settings, ranging from academics to private practice to locums to military. And so we have talent ranging from IT [information technology] background to health policy to rural practice, and it’s just a delight to be surrounded by such a diverse group of talent who’s very passionate about the work. Personally, I would love for the College and really the specialty to get to know us better as a Board of Directors. We are clinicians, we take care of patients, and we also love the boardroom. The main thing I think people need to know is that when we go into that boardroom, when we put on the ACEP hat, when we’re representing you as a College, you are the focus, you are the priority.

Dr. Dark: Let me switch gears a little bit. I wanted to talk about ownership in emergency medicine, and I think you mentioned that when you guys are in that boardroom, you’re there to work on behalf of the members. A lot of questions that I’m going to be throwing at you next are actually from emergency physicians. And one of the biggest things I think that is of interest to current practicing docs is how does ACEP plan to combat the corporate practice of medicine now, especially after ACEP has its own policies and procedures about this?

Dr. Terry: The corporate practice of medicine has certainly been on our minds a lot, and we are working to not just have a statement around the corporate practice of medicine, but also to live it out through our actions. When you talk about the corporate practice of medicine, that’s one category, but then in some ways there’s overlap with consolidation, in terms of talking about consolidation of physician groups, and consolidation even of insurers, and then how that folds into, potentially, the corporate practice of medicine. There’s a lot of nuance to it. I think it’s important that we educate each other around the differences between corporate medicine and consolidation.