Protecting Emergency Physicians in the Shifting Landscape of Corporatization in Health Care

Through more than 50 years of policies and advocacy, ACEP has fought to protect the autonomy of the emergency physician. But we are hearing from you, our current, former and future members, that ACEP should do more.

More to empower every physician to be able to make the decisions that they believe are in the best interest of their patients and their livelihood. More to uphold employer best practices and level the playing field for physicians who deserve due process, transparency in billing and fair compensation. More to stand up for and fight for what we believe in.

Over the past year and through our new strategic plan, your ACEP leaders have taken several bold steps to show that we hear you and will increase our fight for you.

Defending Indivisible Physician-Patient Relationship

• On April 23, 2024, the FTC voted to ban non-compete clauses in the future & make current ones unenforceable - a move that ACEP strongly supports. Using your stories & our influence, ACEP helped ensure the FTC saw the impact of these predatory clauses. 
• ACEP leaders met with Jonathan Kanter, the U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust, and other key Department of Justice staff to discuss the growing negative impact of insurer consolidation on emergency physicians and the patients they care for.
• ACEP sent a formal letter commenting on the FTC and DOJ's proposed updates to guidelines used to assess health care mergers. ACEP supported the proposal to more closely examine the labor impacts of health care mergers as well as lowered thresholds for identifying potentially monopolistic market share.
• ACEP's Board approved a new policy statement on the corporate practice of medicine, bolstering the organization’s commitment to protecting and empowering its members.
• ACEP sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission in response to their proposed ban on non-compete clauses in employment contracts. We detailed how this unfair, predatory practice affects our members and expressed our support for finalizing their ban. Learn more in our public statement about this response.
• The ACEP Board of Directors approved the ACEP Statement on Private Equity and Corporate Investment in Emergency Medicine, reaffirming our core beliefs and emphasizing the physician-patient relationship as the moral center of medicine that can never be compromised.
• ACEP filed an amicus brief in the AAEMPG v. Envision case, upholding the sanctity of a physician’s duty to patients and the importance of allowing them to practice medicine without undue pressure from outside forces. Through this filing, ACEP is applying its might on behalf of our nearly 40,000 members in legal efforts to assert the physician’s right to autonomy in medical decision-making. EMRA also filed a Declaration of Interest in support of the ACEP position.

Taking Your Fight to the Government

These stories were combined to illustrate patterns and serve as a backdrop for our recommendations in a formal comment letter sent to the FTC on April 20, 2022 harnessing the clout of ACEP’s voice. 

ACEP President Dr. Gillian Schmitz and ACEP Executive Director Sue Sedory also shared a preview of some of the collected stories during the FTC's "Listening Forum on Firsthand Effects of Mergers and Acquisitions: Health Care" on April 14, 2022.

Advocating for Your Protections on the Job

ACEP strongly supports legislation under discussion in Congress that would uphold due process protections for physicians. Specifically, this legislation would enable physicians to avoid a mandatory waiver of due process rights, which many are forced to comply with as a condition of group employment.

ACEP is leading conversations with Congress, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and other agencies to make sure that the federal officials keeping a keen eye on provider and insurer consolidation understand emergency physicians’ concerns about the impact of consolidation on systemic issues and costs, reimbursement, and patient care.

For the June 8, 2023 hearing, “Consolidation and Corporate Ownership in Health Care: Trends and Impacts on Access, Quality, and Costs,” ACEP submitted a statement for the record detailing concerns about how consolidation within the health care sector affects emergency physicians and patients.