RP: Correct. My goal as President is to fight for all forms of practice so that in five years, when the dust settles, people have a choice on where they practice based on what’s right for them.

KK: Along those same lines of group democracy, what would you say for those who don’t know you well and would question how a physician from a large contract management group would be best suited to be the president of ACEP?

RP: They need to look at me as a person, and as I described, my practice setting has varied. As a person, I am a good choice because of those experiences. This is not the only type of group I’ve ever worked for. First of all, it comes down to the person.

KK: For those who are not aware of the need for an office building, how would you explain that to them?

RP: I think you start at how old our current building is. Really, it was built 40 years ago. We’ve been there a long time, and the size of the College is tremendously larger. We actually had to move our financial department to another building because they have no room in the building for them. We have outgrown our space. When we went through the process of figuring out what we need to do to enhance that space, we asked the team to investigate if we could expand and build onto the building we have now. We thought we could lease space where we have everyone together, and that was financially not the best option either. The good thing is that when we bought our property and started the process, we bought the property fairly early on. It’s actually already increased in value; it’s been a good investment. The portion of money that we put into the down payment was taken out of our savings. There was no dues increase; it was actually money we’d saved over time, and a good proportion of that will be dues money that’s been saved up along with money from the Scientific Assembly, investments, etc. We financed the other portion of that so it’s not all coming out of our reserves. I think in the end, it’s going to set us up for the next 40 years. It’s supposed to open in September, and we’re going to be able to invite some of the original founders who put together the original building. Most of them are still alive, so that will be pretty neat.