Representative Ronny Jackson

Twitter: @repronnyjackson

What do you think has been your greatest accomplishment since you’ve been in Congress that has benefited emergency physicians specifically?

Dr. Jackson: We helped one hospital in particular to get proper funds for the Provider Relief Fund, which actually was a big deal for them and it probably would have ended up basically collapsing without it. And then we had another hospital that we were able to make sure they kept their participation in the 340B drug processing program, which also would have been detrimental had they not. If you’re in a rural area of Texas like I am where I have 41 counties and 42,000 square miles, if you don’t take care of the rural hospitals and you don’t take care of emergency care for people in your district a lot of times they can’t get to another hospital because they’re just too far away. So, I think keeping our rural hospitals up and running, trying to do everything we can to prevent rural hospitals from collapsing, which is hard to do nowadays, I think has been my biggest contribution to emergency medicine since I’ve been in Congress.

I’ve seen recently a lot of burnout surveys, emergency medicine went from fourth or fifth burnout to being number one or number two spot this past year. What’s more stressful for you personally? Is it working in the ED or being in Congress?

Dr. Jackson: For me, it’s more stressful being in Congress. I spent 25 years as an emergency physician practicing emergency medicine. But I did most of that at urgent care centers.

Now that I’m in Congress and I’m talking to my civilian colleagues all the time, there are so many things they had to deal with that I didn’t have to deal in the military—the insurance companies, the hospitals, all the regulatory burden that was imposed upon them, the paperwork and the administrative burden. In the military and the Navy in particular, we just took care of the patients and we didn’t worry about where the payment was coming from or anything else.

We got paid the same no matter what we did, you know, and I just think that it wasn’t as stressful for me having practiced in the military is as it is for my civilian colleagues. So, I can imagine after talking to a lot of my colleagues, it would probably be more stressful to practice in that environment than being Congress.