Academy of Administrators in Academic Emergency Medicine

Welcome to our website. Our Academy has just finished its first year as a formal Academy within SAEM and by all measures, it was a very successful year. Those who were able to join us in Santa Fe know that we enjoyed another very successful national meeting and we were very pleased to have welcomed so many new members to our group over our first full year of operation. The AAAEM now has 54 members and is working under the direction of its first formally elected Executive Committee. We have 5 standing committees that are very active, working on initiatives that include expanding our membership, developing strong communication tools, further developing our benchmark survey, planning future conferences and developing training opportunities for developing leaders in emergency medicine. It is wonderful to see that most of our members are part of at least one committee—that kind of interest and engagement will add real value to our group.

While our Academy is still new, it continues to grow faster than any of us anticipated when we began this journey two or three years ago. Clearly, there have been many dedicated people involved in making this Academy real, but the explosive growth and expanding interest is a real credit to our first Chair, Ken Marx who worked so diligently to pull us all together and to Mary Burr and her team on the Membership Committee who masterfully organized our membership lists and lead our first successful recruitment campaign. Those of us who serve the AAAEM now and those who will serve in the future have wonderful leadership examples to follow.

So, where do we go from here? Unless I’m the only one who does not have all of the answers yet, it seems to me that we are operating in a sea of uncertainty. Healthcare finance reform, funding of critical research and the very operations of our evolving health systems have us all searching for the right direction—looking for the “right” answer. However, in all of this uncertainty, we know that our patients will continue to need the care we provide; there will always be patients who need immediate intervention to survive, urgent interventions to improve and episodic care to continue to function. It is up to us, members of AAAEM, to develop business models, operating systems and clinical tools that can provide that care in a new healthcare reality. Those who will be successful in the developing healthcare arena will be flexible in their approach, able to change quickly and will be driven by a dedication to always do the right thing for each and every patient who needs care—that sounds an awful like a description of those of us who work in emergency medicine.

Indeed, I believe that the next few years may determine the direction of emergency medicine as a specialty. At some point we will decide—are we to focus on the care of those who have the “true emergency” or do we serve a larger population of patients who need lower acuity episodic care? Are we focused on the initial evaluation and stabilization of patients or are we responsible for care of the patient over an extended period of hours? Is there such a thing as an inpatient under the care of emergency physicians? This academy exists in large measure to help answer those questions and others, to help to define emergency medicine in a new healthcare world and most importantly, we are there to assure that the lights are on in emergency departments across the country so we can care for those who need us.

For those who have not yet become part of our group, please consider joining us. For more information about joining our group, please contact the Chair of our Membership Committee, Kirstin Rounds at KRounds@Lifespan.org. I look forward to continuing our work as we define the future of our Academy and of our specialty.

James Scheulen, Chair, MBA
Johns Hopkins University