In 2009, on the heels of the second Report Card, a comprehensive media campaign called “Myths and Realities,” the lead-up to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and other factors, Mr. Wilkerson was named #37 on the list of Top 100 Most Influential People in Health Care by Modern Healthcare magazine. “It was a great honor for me, but it was really a testimony to how active and effective ACEP members and staff are in so many areas,” he said.

The value of activity at the chapter level has been important to Mr. Wilkerson. He added $50,000 to the ACEP budget for state public policy grants in addition to ACEP’s traditional chapter grants. In 2008, ACEP started offering free member services for chapters, including a state public policy tracking service, chapter newsletters, website development, and more.

During his tenure, ACEP communications have continually evolved to suit changing member needs, with several comprehensive overhauls of our website; the daily customized news briefing, EM Today; and an embracing of social media with Twitter, Facebook, blogs, podcasts, videos, apps, and more.

Mr. Wilkerson said he is proud of how ACEP has reengineered ACEP Now by increasing the clinical content of what was once known as ACEP News. Annals of Emergency Medicine has long been an excellent flagship publication of ACEP and has continued to gain prominence. His leadership is helping guide the early 2020 launch of ACEP’s second journal, an online-only open-access publication known as JACEP Open.

After passage of the Affordable Care Act, ACEP created the Emergency Medicine Action Fund (EMAF), which has funded many important projects, including the “Value of EM Study” conducted by the RAND Corporation.

A Lasting Legacy

One of the most significant developments under Mr. Wilkerson’s leadership has been the creation of ACEP’s Clinical Emergency Data Registry (CEDR), what he describes as “an amazingly complicated enterprise.” It was started in 2014, and by 2016, CEDR began to gain traction and grow steadily. “CEDR will be a cornerstone asset of ACEP and the specialty for the foreseeable future as quality measurement and improvement continues to be of vital importance not only to the government but to all payers,” Mr. Wilkerson said.

Many clinical and practice resources were developed under Mr. Wilkerson’s leadership, including the Boarding Solutions Report distributed to all member hospitals by the American Hospital Association; the Geriatric ED Accreditation Program; the Emergency Medicine Practice Research Network (EMPRN), which captures important insights from more than 1,200 members; and, most recently, the EM point-of-care tools for use at the bedside.