Dear Colleague,

The North Carolina College of Emergency Physicians exists to help you in your professional endeavors. We advocate for you at the general assembly both to promote our legislative agenda and to block legislation that would negatively affect our ability to practice. We advocate for you with government and private insurance carriers to protect our reimbursement rates so we can be paid for the services we provide. We advocate for you within the house of medicine so that our colleagues can fully appreciate the important role we play. Most importantly, however, we advocate for our patients so that we can take care of them to the best of our abilities.

In the last year the college played an important part in the passage of medical liability reform in North Carolina and we will be vigilant in defending that legislation. We also have worked hard to prevent any further cuts to Medicaid this year. NCCEP is also collaborating with the Community Care of North Carolina (CCNC) organization to work on the Chronic Pain Initiative to help combat controlled substance misuse/diversion. We continue to work hard on issues with treating and boarding mental health patients in the emergency department. As you can see, our work affects you and your patients.
NCCEP has grown steadily in membership, structure and resources in the last several years. We actively seek to address whatever concerns you have as a practitioner. We ask for your support in terms of providing your time and expertise by serving on one of our committees and/or as one of our leaders. We also ask for your support of the NCCEP Political Action Committee so that we can support candidates and legislators from both parties who understand our specialty’s importance as the health care safety net.
Sincerely,

Gregory Cannon, MD, FACEP