ACEP Executive Director Dean Wilkerson, JD, MBA, CAE, the staff, and members of the board rapidly put out a request for proposals for development of a QCDR. I’m happy to say that we finalized a contract to have a software developer create an ACEP QCDR, the Clinical Emergency Data Registry or CEDR. We will immediately task the Quality and Performance Committee, QIPS (our quality improvement and patient safety section), our technical expert panel, and other committees to help us produce quality measures so that we can begin reporting by the third quarter of 2015. This will protect us from a draconian cut in 2017. I can’t emphasize how important this initiative is.

With a QCDR, you can also develop your own patient-satisfaction tool. We may not necessarily be beholden to EDPEC, the Emergency Department Patient Experience of Care survey, which is going to be the ED version of the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. We will also be able to use the QCDR for Maintenance of Certification with the American Board of Emergency Medicine and American Osteopathic Board of Emergency Medicine. This is a project that will have far-reaching effects on the function of the College. I think we can be leaders in the house of medicine in this process.

KK: What do you say to those who say ACEP is just another organization in bed with big pharma and practice management or contract management groups?

MG: If you look at the College from the outside and don’t choose to be a member, I think that’s the kind of rationalization rhetoric you hear. I see ACEP as the organization that truly represents me—as a practicing physician—and also my patients.

Let’s talk about pharma. Pharma employees go to work every day trying to make or design more effective drugs at less cost; that’s their fundamental mission. Are there examples where companies are profiteering and may be charging too much? Yes, but that’s an economic discussion for a future article. If pharma is willing to help support research for a vexing problem, I don’t call that being in bed with them. I call that having a partner who is willing to invest resources to help us do research.

Let’s talk about the large contract management groups. When I put on my white coat to care for patients, I am just a physician (with a little gray hair), and I hope I can take care of their needs. But behind me is a billing company or somebody who helps me do my schedule, or helps me recruit for the shift that’s open, or provides medical liability insurance, or helps me convene quality improvement committees, or runs interference with a hospital administration that doesn’t see eye to eye with me about what our mission is. All those people working behind me are supporting my ability to practice and focus on the patient and their family, and I don’t see why that is necessarily a bad thing.