Dr. David Seaberg was chosen president-elect during the annual ACEP Council meeting in late September in conjunction with the Scientific Assembly in Las Vegas. Dr. Seaberg, dean of the University of Tennessee College of Medicine in Chattanooga, will serve a 1-year term and will assume ACEP’s presidency at next year’s meeting in San Francisco.

The Council also elected two new members to the Board of Directors – Dr. Paul Kivela and Dr. Robert O’Connor – and reelected Dr. Andrew Bern and Dr. Andrew Sama. Board members serve 3-year terms.

Dr. Seaberg was elected to the ACEP Board of Directors in 2005 and again in 2008. During that time, he has served as board liaison to various ACEP Committees, been a member of several ACEP task forces, and took part in other national and chapter activities.

Dr. Seaberg said patient access to care, liability reform, and fair payment for emergency physician services are at the top of his agenda. “We have accomplished much, but the next several years are critical as we move into the regulatory arena” of implementing the health care reform law, Dr. Seaberg told the Council.

ACEP and other specialty societies must embrace the concept of providing value for the health care reimbursement dollar, Dr. Seaberg said. “Emergency medicine should continue to demonstrate the value emergency care provides,” he wrote in his campaign materials. “It will be through value-based emergency care that we will be able to attain improved liability protection.”

From 2000 to 2007, he was professor and associate chairman of the department of emergency medicine at the University of Florida, and was chief of emergency services at Shands Hospital at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He earned his MD at the University of Minnesota in 1987 and completed an emergency medicine residency at the University of Pittsburgh in 1990. He also has a graduate degree in medical management through the American College of Physician Executives.

“As health care reform enters the regulatory and rule-writing phase, careful and strategic interactions at the agency level will be critical,” Dr. Seaberg said.

“We may not all agree on the specifics of health care reform, but the principles of quality, liability reform and fair payment are central themes that we all must embrace,” he added. “As President, I intend to stay on focus with these priorities.”