Since 1970, advocates for the Emergency Medicine specialty.
Membership Benefits
Virginia ACEP is your voice in Virginia and nationally. Emergency Physicians are asked to be the safety net of a challenged healthcare system, and because of our willingness to care for Anyone/Anything/Anytime, we are easy targets for insurers, the legal system, and legislators. In 2018, VACEP’s 40 board members, councillors, and fellows donated 3200 hours of volunteer time worth more than $680,000 to help protect YOU, a Virginia Emergency Physician.
As it comes time for your membership renewal to the Virginia College of Emergency Physicians, we want to bring you up to speed on the many ways your involvement helps us tell the story of emergency medicine in the Commonwealth – and beyond. Click “Join Now” below to become a VACEP member or renew your existing membership today.
Thank you for your continued support of the Virginia College of Emergency Physicians.
What we’re working on
Community building: Over the next year, we are focused on building a stronger emergency medicine community by connecting emergency physicians with one another. Our goal is to continuously refine our knowledge, empower members, and build new programs to support your career and our specialty’s future.
In Washington, D.C. and Richmond: We’re working to end the need to balance bill patients by ensuring that health insurers reimburse Emergency Physicians directly and fairly for their services. In May, we met with legislators on Capitol Hill who are interested in our approach to solving balance billing. The White House has signaled its desire to end this practice, and we must ensure it is done in a manner favorable to physicians and patients. VACEP is in the unique position to serve as ACEP’s “boots on the ground” due to both our proximity to the nation’s capital and the expertise of our members.
New psychiatric guidelines: VACEP is an advocate for mental health reform. With our hospital and government partners, we have developed standardized, cost-effective, and safe guidelines for medical assessment of psychiatric patients. These guidelines went into effect on Nov. 5, 2018 for both adult and pediatric patients. We continue to work on initiatives to make your life easier by reducing psychiatric boarding and providing your more resources to help your patients.
Emergency department alerts: Last year, the Virginia Department of Health launched the Emergency Department Information Exchange, linking departments in health systems statewide. EDie plugs directly into the existing EMR and alerts emergency physicians to high-utilizer patients, prescription “shoppers,” and those with complex needs. Physicians regularly share stories of reduced costs, bypassed tests, and saved lives thanks to this system. We will continue to work on enhancing this network to provide more functionality to our physicians.
The value of VACEP
We are the voice for you, making sure that Emergency Physicians have a strong say in Virginia issues related to emergency medicine.
The more members VACEP has, the more Councillors we have within ACEP. This gives us a stronger voice to ensure national ACEP policy is beneficial for Virginia physicians.
Our latest accomplishments
Working together with the hospitals and patient advocates, we defeated health plan legislation in the Virginia General Assembly which would have stripped what little negotiating leverage Emergency Physicians have with insurance companies by prohibiting balance billing and forcing providers to accept unreasonable insurers’ proprietary in-network rates. This was a huge victory for VACEP and the physician community. Ultimately, when the 2019 legislative session adjourned, no legislation passed addressing the issue of balance billing and a workgroup with strong physician represenation will be convened to work on the issue.
Looking forward
Fair Payment and balance billing: Despite no balance billing legislation passing, we fought to create a fair workgroup to review the issue of surprise billing in Virginia. That workgroup will begin this summer.