Every year, ACEP’s Federal Government Affairs Committee and the ACEP advocacy team work together to establish broad goals for the upcoming legislative session.

1. Mental Health: ACEP priorities include strengthening the mental/behavioral health care workforce, increasing integration, coordination, and access to mental health care, ensuring parity, furthering the use of telehealth, and improving access especially for children and young adults. ACEP also continues urging Congress to include physician mental health and burnout as necessary considerations in any comprehensive mental health policy initiatives.
2. EM Workforce: ACEP is developing legislation to help address the unique concerns of the EM workforce and to create incentives to help fill in gaps in emergency care in rural and underserved communities in the United States. This legislation coincides with ACEP’s ongoing advocacy on Capitol Hill as legislators examine growing health care workforce shortages and other challenges facing the health care system. 
3. EM Due Process: ACEP is concerned by reports of health care workers being threatened or silenced for speaking out about public health and safety concerns, especially during the pandemic. ACEP is working closely with legislators to reintroduce the “Emergency Room Hero and Patient Safety Act” that would ensure every EM physician has medical staff due process protections.
4. Expanding Access to Services for OUD Patients: ACEP disagrees with the requirement that physicians must apply for a special waiver in order to prescribe buprenorphine. ACEP supports the bipartisan, bicameral “Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Act” and is urging Congress to reauthorize the successful “Alternatives to Opioids (ALTO) in the Emergency Department Act.”
5. Medicare Reimbursement: At the end of 2021, Congress acted to avert most Medicare reimbursement cuts that were slated to affect many physicians, including EM. ACEP aims to work with them this year to develop a longer term solution that provides stability and appropriate payment for physician services without setting specialties against one another due to budget neutrality requirements.

All ACEP members are invited to join the cause by participating in the upcoming Leadership & Advocacy Conference, May 1–3.