ACEP names Envision Healthcare exec Jaquis as president-elect

The American College of Emergency Physicians has elected Dr. William Jaquis as its president-elect, the medical society said on Monday.

Jaquis, who is senior vice president of Envision Healthcare's east Florida division, will begin serving his one-year term as president of the medical society in October 2019.

"The past five years have brought significant changes in health policy, market consolidation and the role of social media to emergency medicine," Jaquis said in the announcement. "Emergency physicians must address critical issues, such as prudent layperson and fair coverage, or it will lead to broad-based changes that harm access to care for millions of emergency patients."

This year, the ACEP has fought against health insurer Anthem for allegedly violating the prudent layperson standard by denying coverage for patients who visited the emergency department for conditions Anthem determined weren't serious enough. The ACEP and the Medical Association of Georgia sued Anthem's Georgia subsidiary in July in hopes of forcing the insurer to kill that policy, which has left patients on the hook for big bills.

Envision, where Jaquis is an executive, has also come under fire for leaving patients with surprise out-of-network ED bills and is currently embroiled in a spat with UnitedHealth Group over Envision's billing practices.

The staffing company was the subject of a July 2017 study by Yale University researchers who found that hospitals outsourcing emergency department operations to Envision's EmCare unit from 2011 to 2015 saw increases in the rates of out-of-network doctor's bills, tests ordered and patients admitted to the ED.

In a 2017 New York Times story about that study, Jaquis was quoted saying emergency physicians want better payment from and negotiation with insurers so that patients are covered, but insurers sometimes leave doctors no choice but to be out-of-network because they offer only low payments.

Jaquis was voted to the ACEP's board in 2012 and 2015, and has also served as the organization's vice president, according to ACEP.