If you are not an AMA member, now is the time to join. If you are already a member, please make certain that you have balloted on the AMA website to designate ACEP as your representative at the AMA. ACEP’s five-year membership review at the AMA is this year, and the number of delegates we get in the AMA HOD is determined by the number of AMA members we have. Sadly, at this time of so much accomplishment by our specialty and with so many challenges facing us in Washington and elsewhere, we are subject to losing one or more delegates absent an improvement in our EM membership within the AMA membership. Fewer delegates means that the future of medicine could be shaped to a greater extent by other specialties such as radiology, surgery, family practice, internal medicine, pediatrics, and many others—others that do not have the expertise of our specialty and that do not necessarily have the best interests of our specialty in mind.

With one of us about to assume the pinnacle of leadership within organized medicine, it is now time for each of us to make an additional press forward on behalf of emergency medicine by joining the AMA to ensure our voice remains strong and grows stronger still.

You can further enhance emergency medicine’s AMA influence by joining the AMA now at https://commerce.ama-assn.org/membership.

Dr. Steven Stack