On behalf of TeamHealth’s 14,000 physicians and advanced practice clinicians who deliver exceptional care to every patient we treat, I would like to further crystalize the on-the-record comments I made before your article published on September 10 about the impact of private equity on emergency medicine.

Top among TeamHealth’s values is the advancement of clinical care and uncompromised patient safety. It’s why, in our more than 40-year history, we have never had a strategy to balance bill patients, and we never will. Our patient-first strategy was core to TeamHealth before the federal No Surprises Act. It’s also why we continue to fight so ardently against insurers: to protect every patient from surprise medical bills and ensure fair reimbursement for emergency medicine clinicians.

I appeal to you and the entire American College of Emergency Physicians. The collective power of 42,000 emergency medicine physicians is immense and cannot be ignored in insurers’ corporate boardrooms or the halls of Congress. We can use our voices to increase Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, stop corporate insurers from cutting our contracts to pad their profits, and guarantee that every patient receives exceptional care in any emergency room nationwide.

Let us come together on issues that impact all practices, large and small and irrespective of ownership or affiliation, by uniting against abusive practices that will destroy emergency medicine.

We must create opportunities to thrive in an ecosystem that allows us to recruit the best and brightest to the specialty and do the best for our patients.

Jody Crane, MD, MBA, is chief medical officer at TeamHealth.