Twice a year, ACEP Now speaks to the President of ACEP. This conversation with Christopher S. Kang, MD, FACEP, assesses how his term leading the College has gone so far, and how the profession is weathering the storms of boarding, burnout, and a challenging Match season.

This boarding crisis seems to have exploded this year. Yesterday on shift, I had a patient that’s been in our ER for at least 120 hours. What’s changed over the past six months that you’ve heard about in terms of the boarding crisis?

Dr. Kang: I think there are three aspects to talk about. One is actually what you and I and others of our colleagues see every day, and that is the boarding crisis has not improved, and in some ways, it’s gotten worse. It depends on regionally and individually of each institution, but I think overall most people would say that boarding has not improved. Second of all is, what is the College trying to do about this? In November, we submitted a letter to the White House asking for a summit to bring all stakeholders together to talk about this issue because it’s going to require every part of the healthcare system to address and it’s not going to be an easy fix.

Over the past few months, we’ve been waiting as the new congressional session has begun to see what actions are taken. We provided them with some data and some anecdotes about how things were actually getting worse, specifically for mental health … they were intrigued, but unfortunately offered no other further actions other than to ask for some additional data.

In the meantime, thanks to ACEP staff and leaders, a task force was formed and concluded its work to identify that if we needed to hold our own summit, who would we invite? What would be our overarching objectives and how would we proceed about doing so? And thankfully that task force has completed its report and has outlined what our objectives are financially, operationally, personnel-wise, patient care-wise.

If we don’t hear back from the White House in the next few weeks, there was a letter that was recently circulated in conjunction with our LAC meeting to see how much congressional support we could have to encourage the White House to hold this. And if not, then we will likely move forward to hold our own summit sometime this summer.