WACEP President's Message, April 2021

April 13, 2021 5:58 AM | Deleted user

Bradley Burmeister, MD FACEP
WACEP President

Thanks to all who were able to participate in last week’s virtual Spring Symposium! I will use this opportunity to recap the report I shared during our Annual Membership Meeting.

First, I hope everyone is finding themselves a bit more optimistic this year compared to last year at this time.  Even through our annual conference and membership meeting were virtual, I’m thankful that we had an opportunity to get together to continue our important work and to come together as a state. I certainly look forward to when we can all be together again in person.

This year has been incredibly challenging for our entire community. As you all have no doubt experienced, unique challenges have presented themselves in practicing Emergency Medicine. WACEP leadership has been working hard to support you, our members, and all emergency physicians in the state. Specifically, we heard that emergency physician groups were struggling with decreased volumes and revenue and were forced to cut back hours and lay off staff. We worked with the Governor’s office to make CARES Act dollars available via CAPP patients. This resulted in millions of dollars to support emergency physician practice in Wisconsin.

We have worked tirelessly both at the state and national levels to mitigate potential risk with surprise billing legislation. Here, insurance companies saw significant potential financial advantage by rate setting potentially allowing out-of-network reimbursement to be even worse than negotiated in-network fees. In fact, many of your peers in WI traveled to DC to discuss concerns with our policymakers, and we think we have pretty good policy going forward.

Through the Emergency Psych Task Force, WACEP continues to work cooperatively with the Wisconsin Psychiatric Association on mental health issues. Together we’ve made great progress on improving mental health access and building on the relationship between emergency department and psychiatric centers across the state.

Lastly, as hopefully you have heard, we are very excited that emergency medicine has finally been considered in the Governor’s proposed executive budget for a Medicaid reimbursement rate increase that is planned to be permanent, not linked to Medicaid expansion, and that would improve rates by more than 30% of current rates. Though this move would advance us from last in the nation to just 45th, the move would be a giant step forward and would effectively represent millions of dollars in additional funding to your practice per year if it survives the legislative budget process. Stay tuned for information on how you can help!

I’ve outlined just a few of the many things that we have been working on as your professional association. None of this would be possible without you, our members. As a membership organization we depend largely on your membership and engagement to allow for our continued advocacy work.  Your membership will help us make needed advancements in Emergency Medicine in Wisconsin. We are YOUR voice; we are there to protect you, your practice and your patients.  Thanks for your membership!

~Brad