Update from the President: Progress in California

I have recently participated in several media interviews where I raised AAEM's concerns regarding Tenet Health's plan to replace its independent emergency medicine, hospitalist, and anesthesiology groups in California with a national physician staffing company.

AAEM feels this would be highly disruptive to its hospitals and could compromise quality of care. These media interviews had much exposure in the local press and helped Tenet and the community to better understand our concerns. On September 5th, I participated in a conference call with Tenet Health leadership, an attorney for the Coalition for Quality Hospital Care, and the California ACEP President Dr. Osmundson. During the call, Tenet's leadership informed us they were no longer considering using one national physician staffing company for all of the involved California practices.

In addition, Tenet committed that they would begin contract renewal negotiations with the independent emergency medicine groups staffing its California hospitals, and attempt to partner with them to achieve their goals of better coordinating care across services. We are encouraged by these positive developments. We will continue to work closely with the involved independent emergency medicine groups and monitor this evolving process.

During the call, a position supported by California-ACEP (that it does not favor any physician group practice model over others) was erroneously attributed to AAEM as well (per a follow-up letter from Tenet). AAEM has always endorsed practice models based on fairness, transparency, financial equity, physician autonomy, and the best possible care of patients - qualities that we believe are exemplified by independent, local, democratic, physician-owned medical groups. AAEM responded with a follow-up letter to Tenet Health's Western Region CEO.

Take care,
Mark

Mark Reiter, MD MBA FAAEM
President, American Academy of Emergency Medicine