Introducing Section Officers for 2022-23

Chair: Emily M. Hayden, MD, MHPE

Dr. Hayden is an attending physician and Director of Telehealth and Associate Director of the Virtual Observation Unit in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Hayden is the founding Chair of the SAEM Telehealth Interest Group, Chair of the SAEM 2020 Consensus Conference on Telehealth in Emergency Medicine, Chair of the Education Subcommittee on the recent ACEP Telehealth Task Force, and the Chair of both the ACEP Emergency Telehealth Section and the ACEP Health Innovations Technology Committee. She is a member of the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) Telehealth Advisory Committee that developed the AAMC Telehealth Competencies. She is the Course Director for a self-paced online inter-professional telehealth course, “Telehealth Foundations: Applications Across the Professions”. Dr. Hayden’s research focuses on telehealth in emergency medicine, from the use of telehealth nationally for transfer coordination to the comparison of telehealth to in-person physical examinations. Prior to her work in telehealth, Dr. Hayden spent a decade in healthcare simulation and developed the Tele-Simulation program at MGH Learning Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Chair Elect: Michael Baker, MD, FACEP

Dr. Baker began delivering emergency telehealth to nursing homes and ambulances almost ten years ago. He is core faculty for the University of Michigan/St. Joseph Mercy Hospital residency in emergency medicine and Director of Virtual Health for Envision Health. His interests in telehealth include value based care, workflows, and quality of care. He resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Secretary: Rishi Khakhkhar, MD, MBA

Dr. Rishi Khakhkhar is a practicing emergency physician and faculty member at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City. There, he serves as the Medical Director of Virtual Urgent Care and lends an operational hand to the health system’s growing Hospital at Home program. He focuses on innovation in the delivery of acute care with an eye towards developing high-quality, resource-effective care models for providers and patients alike.

Newsletter Editor: Iyesatta Massaquoi Emeli, MD, MPH, FACEP

Dr. Iyesatta Massaquoi Emeli is a Distinguished Physician and Assistant Professor at Emory University. She earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard University, her medical degree from Case Western Reserve University and she completed emergency medicine residency training at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Emeli has a masters degree in applied public health informatics with a specific focus on the intersection of healthcare and technology. She has extensive experience working with underserved communities both in the United States and internationally (in Ghana, Malawi, Uganda and Sierra Leone). Her particular interest is the unique and under-utilized role of technology in resource poor environments. She is currently part of a working group at Emory tasked with developing virtual acute unscheduled care models. In addition, Dr. Emeli is a short story writer and is published in the New York Times Magazine.

Councilor: Aditi U Joshi MD, MSc, FACEP

Dr. Joshi is the current Councillor and immediate past chair of ACEP’s Emergency Telehealth Section. She has worked in Telehealth for a decade at a startup and was the former medical director of the telehealth program at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Currently she works as a consultant in telehealth and digital health consulting and is authoring a book on telemedicine.

Alternate Councilor: Deborah Ann Mulligan, MD, FACEP

Dr. Mulligan is a board-certified pediatric emergency medicine NSU KPCOM faculty member for 20 years she is the founder of the NSU Institute for Child Health Policy and serves as the Telemedicine Director, Rural and Urban Underserved Medicine. A bilingual physician executive with over 25 years of experience in health systems, academic and venture-backed entrepreneurial organizations, her specific areas of expertise include strategy formulation, organizational transformation, operations improvement, advising health systems and policymakers about disruptive technologies and business models that accelerate transformation and constrain health expenditures. A long-standing member of ACEP with prior service as Chair, Pediatric Emergency Medicine Section; AAP/ACEP Co-Author of Joint Statements and Technical Reports; as well as co-investigator to ACEP federally funded projects she is an approved ACEP spokesperson on the topic of telehealth. Included in over 100 peer review publications are telehealth standards such as ATA Work Group on Pediatric, School Health and Urgent Care Standards. Community service, scientific, educational and professional society awards, include recognition in the US Congressional Record; National EMSC Heroes Award for Innovation; Florida State Surgeon General Injury Prevention Award and the Florida Universities’ Community Engagement Educator Award’ presented by First Lady Michelle Obama.