Kenneth L. DeHart, MD, FACEP, passed away unexpectedly March 19, 2016, at his home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Dr. DeHart was an ACEP member for almost 30 years, with a strong history of service to the College. He served as chair of the Reimbursement Committee from 1993 to 1995 and helped create the Coding & Nomenclature Advisory Committee (CNAC), serving as its chair from 1993 to 1998. Dr. DeHart was a frequent speaker at ACEP meetings at the national and regional levels and helped author several publications on coding for ED services.

Dr. DeHart may be best known for his work as an emergency medicine representative in the American Medical Association CPT process, serving for more than 20 years as a panelist, as an Advisory Committee member, and two separate terms on the CPT Assistant Editorial Advisory Board. He also served as a councillor from South Carolina and as an American Board of Emergency Medicine oral examiner for many years. He was a pioneer of the multispecialty group practice model as president of Carolina Health Specialists in Myrtle Beach.

Dr. DeHart was presented with the James D. Mills Outstanding Contribution to Emergency Medicine Award in 1998 and continued to serve the emergency medicine community for the next 18 years, available to anyone who asked for his assistance with questions on coding or compliance. The confidential nature of the CPT process resulted in many of Dr. DeHart’s contributions remaining unknown to the vast majority of ACEP members, but he will be remembered as a servant leader with exceptional strategic management skills by those who knew him. Dr. DeHart was featured just last month in a story highlighting the ACEP CPT team’s accomplishment having won a national award for its member education programs.