A Year of Achievement

by Larry Weiss, MD JD FAAEM

As we prepare for our annual meeting on November 8, we reflect on a year of considerable accomplishments. We now have over 120 members. We chartered our political action committee, we published the first three issues of our state chapter newsletter, we filed an amicus brief with the Louisiana Supreme Court on a very high profile EMTALA case, we sent a letter to the CEOs and medical staff presidents of every hospital in Louisiana describing the benefits of having board certified emergency physicians, and we sent a copy of the AAEM pamphlet on board certification to every hospital in Louisiana. We did this all on a "shoestring" budget with a minimal dues structure. Many thanks to our capable and talented Executive Director, Sylvia Cusimano.

To an increasing extent, emergency physicians in Louisiana now realize that they may come to AAEMLa if they want action on an urgent issue. We are the activist organization for emergency physicians in Louisiana. Recently, our state Medicare carrier decided they would not allow emergency physicians to oversee hyperbaric oxygen treatments while they work in the emergency department. This policy singles out emergency physicians and discriminates only against us. Medicare refers to this as "multitasking." We perform multitasking whenever we care for more than one patient at a time. In other words, emergency physicians always perform multitasking whenever we work in an ED. Our Board approved a policy to reverse this discriminatory policy. Our PAC will pursue this as an issue in the upcoming year. This issue serves as another example of how our chapter can quickly come to the assistance of emergency physicians in our state who have serious professional problems.

Our annual meeting provides another example of how we serve the emergency physicians in our area. We will provide a series of national quality lectures at the Hyatt Regency in New Orleans at a minimal price. All of our lecturers this year will discuss critical care topics including ventilator management, treatment of shock, and cardiac imaging for acute coronary syndromes. We will provide Category One CME through AAEM. We invite interested physicians throughout the U.S. to attend. You may call our office for hotel information (504 366 7638). Please see the advertisement in the September October issue of Common Sense . We had some unexpected bad weather last year, but early November is really the most beautiful time of the year in New Orleans. Hope to see some of you at our meeting, and at the upcoming national AAEM meeting in San Francisco.

Dr. Larry Weiss is the President of AAEMLa and can be reached at ldweiss@cox.net.

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