Ginde, Adit A. MD, MPH; Camargo, Carlos A. Jr. MD, DrPH

There will not be enough emergency medicine residency trained physicians to cover our nation’s emergency departments for many years. (Acad Emerg Med 2008;15[12]:1317.) This shortage is even more pronounced in smaller and rural EDs and in the face of continually increasing demand for emergency care.

So who covers these EDs? In 2008, 31 percent of physicians practicing in EDs — more than 12,000 physicians — were not emergency medicine residency trained or emergency medicine board certified. (Ann Emerg Med 2009;54[3]:349.) They are family physicians, internists, surgeons, and pediatricians who provide emergency care when an emergency medicine-trained physician is not available. This emergency medicine workforce shortage was a major topic of the 2009 Future of Emergency Medicine Summit, which brought together representatives of the leading emergency medicine organizations. (Schneider SM, et al. The future of emergency medicine. Ann Emerg Med 2010; in press.) Numerous potential solutions were discussed, including increasing emergency medicine residency slots, loan repayment for emergency physicians, joint emergency medicine-family medicine training, and using scribes to improve efficiency. One recommendation that has become increasing popular is the use of midlevel providers such as physician assistants and nurse practitioners.

Indeed, the introduction of midlevel providers to emergency care is already occurring in great numbers. In 2005, 13 percent of all U.S. ED visits were covered by a midlevel provider, up from only four percent in 1993. (Am J Emerg Med 2010;28[1]:90.) At first glance, this may seem like a win-win scenario. Midlevel providers help expand the efficiency of emergency physicians, and cover some of the workforce gap. Their cost to the hospital is lower than a physician’s, and at least for minor presentations, patient satisfaction appears to be high. (Am J Emerg Med 2000;18[6]:661.) An increasing scope of practice and level of autonomy, however, calls into question whether midlevel providers are collaborating with emergency physicians or actually replacingthem.

We fully support emergency medicine residency training, and believe that emergency medicine board certified physicians are the gold standard for providers in the ED. When emergency medicine-trained physicians are unavailable or unwilling to cover some EDs, such as smaller and rural EDs, however, many non-emergency medicine-trained providers, both physicians and midlevel providers, continue to fill the void. While physicians attract a greater amount of criticism and scrutiny, midlevel providers, who do not have formal emergency medicine training and fewer overall years of medical training than physicians, are often embraced as a solution to the workforce shortage.

While NPs are licensed to practice independently in some states, PAs must collaborate with physicians. The scope of practice and degree of autonomy for both groups is state-dependent. Neither group has developed accredited emergency medicine training programs for specialization in emergency care. Yet independent practice is becoming increasingly common. (See figure.) In paging through ED job announcements, we have encountered postings that state, “We are currently seeking a PA who is comfortable working autonomously in our ED.” In 2005, five percent of all ED visits nationwide were seen by midlevel providers without onsite physician involvement, up from one percent in 1993. (Am J Emerg Med 2010;28[1]:90.)

But indirect physician supervision of PAs and their independent practice is legal, isn’t it? Supervision and scope of practice for midlevel providers are defined at the state level. Most states allow provision of emergency care and define supervision as the availability of a physician, but participation in care or even physical presence in the facility is often not required. Physician supervision by co-signing charts or prescriptions days to weeks after the ED visit is occurring throughout the country, although it is unknown how widespread this practice is. How much oversight is truly being provided for these patients?

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But isn’t this is only an issue for rural EDs, where any provider is better than no provider? Not really. National data show that 86 percent of midlevel provider visits without physician involvement are in urban EDs. (Am J Emerg Med 2010;28[1]:90.) While the number of these visits has remained stable in rural EDs, they have markedly increased in urban EDs over the past decade. Emergency physician workforce shortages are probably not driving this as much as practical and financial considerations; ED administrators may hire less expensive midlevel providers instead of emergency physicians. With emergency medicine residency graduates having difficulty obtaining jobs in some desirable urban markets, it’s possible midlevel providers may actually be taking jobs away from emergency medicine residents rather than solving the emergency medicine workforce shortage and maldistribution.

What about acuity? Midlevel providers don’t really need a physician to directly supervise the care of patients with obvious ankle sprains and minor lacerations. This may be true, and data support the quality of care by independent midlevel provider care for minor ED presentations. (Lancet 1999;354 [9187]:1321.) Of ED patients seen in 2005 by midlevel providers without direct physician supervision, however, six percent arrived by ambulance, 37 percent had urgent/emergent acuity, and three percent were admitted to the hospital. (Am J Emerg Med2010;28[1]:90.) While these acuity data are lower than those for physicians in the ED, the role of midlevel providers, who may practice without on-site physician involvement, has clearly extended beyond minor presentations.

Limited data address the quality and patient safety of midlevel provider care of higher acuity ED patients. A recent study of 4,029 visits for acute asthma in 63 U.S. EDs found that unsupervised midlevel providers had a significantly lower quality of ED asthma care, compared with physician-supervised midlevel providers and with physicians alone. (Am J Emerg Med 2010;28[4]:485.)

The latter groups, in which physicians were directly involved, provided care of similar quality. While this is a single study of one condition, acute asthma care has well-defined treatment pathways and evidence-based national guidelines that should create more uniform care than other acute conditions. These data support a view that midlevel providers should collaborate with, rather than replace, emergency physicians, especially for higher acuity patients.

Midlevel providers have a major role in U.S. emergency care, and we support efforts to develop emergency medicine training, accreditation, and continuing medical education for PAs and NPs. Indeed, there are now several post-graduate emergency medicine training programs for PAs and NPs. Before moving forward with a midlevel provider-based “solution” to the emergency physician workforce shortage, we encourage more thoughtful discussion about training, scope of practice, and supervision. The growing acceptance of non-emergency medicine-trained midlevel providers practicing independently in EDs is difficult to reconcile with the often heated and absolute opposition to non-emergency medicine residency trained physicians. The ultimate goal of most emergency physicians and midlevel providers, regardless of their emergency medicine training and accreditation, is to provide effective and safe care for our patients. This should stay at the forefront of the emergency medicine workforce debate.

© 2010 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc.

A National Study Examining Emergency Medicine Specialty Training and Quality Measures in the Emergency Department.

Mathews SC, Kelen GD, Pronovost PJ, Pham JC.

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD.

PMID: 20716690 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Full Text: EM Specialty Training and Quality Measures study

From the introduction of this paper:

“When patients present to the emergency department (ED) for care, they assume that they will be cared for by a physician qualified to diagnose and treat their ills. This trust is even more sacred in emergency settings because patients with emergent conditions generally do not have the opportunity to choose the location or provider who will render this care. For this reason, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Board of Emergency Medicine advocate specific training (ie, emergency medicine [EM] residency) for physicians who treat patients in EDs.

 Yet across the United States, only 69% of physicians who work in the ED are EM residency trained or EM board certified. Fewer than 40% of EDs have a majority of physicians with EM residency training, and only 1 state (Hawaii)adequate supply of EM-board-certified emergency physicians.

Although recent EM physicians are much more likely to be EM residency trained, this deficiency has been attributed  to at least 4 different causes: (1) overall shortage of EM-trained physicians; (2) because EM is a relatively young specialty, a significant proportion of the workforce is composed of so-called legacy emergency physicians (ie, those engaged in EM practice prior to the proliferation of EM specialty training programs); (3) the lower staff cost of hiring non-EM-trained physicians; and (4) the difficulty of recruiting specialty trained physicians to rural locations. This variability in training of ED physicians has elicited some controversy, but the impact of the differences in training on clinical outcomes has not been assessed. EM-trained physicians are less likely to have expensive malpractice claims against them compared with their non-EM-trained counterparts.

Whether specialty training when compared to care provided by generalists  leads to improved clinical outcomes for specific conditions has been reviewed more broadly in medicine, but not in the context of EM.

Because the Institute of Medicine’s 1999 report identified shortcomings in the quality of care in the US health system, there has been renewed emphasis on emphasis on identifying measures of quality and performance.

Treatment of acute myocardial infarction (AMI), pneumonia (PNA), and long bone fractures (LBFs) has been used to evaluate quality across EDs. These characteristics have been recognized as ED quality measures to varying extents. These measures evaluate the extent to which patients receive recommended therapies.”

Commentary:

Core Measures are a set of care processes developed by The Joint Commission, the nation’s predominant standards-setting and accrediting body in health care, to improve the quality of health care by implementing a national, standardized performance measurement system. The Core Measures were derived largely from a set of quality indicators defined by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). They have been shown to reduce the risk of complications, prevent recurrences and otherwise treat the majority of patients who come to a hospital for treatment of a condition or illness. Core Measures help hospitals improve the quality of patient care by focusing on the actual results of care.

This study was a national cross-sectional study of ED visits for 2003 through 2004 using the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS). The NHAMCS is administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s NCHS and is endorsed by the Emergency Nurses Association, the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, the American College of Emergency Physicians, and the American College of Osteopathic Emergency Physicians.  It is a national probability sample of visits to the EDs of non-governmental general and short-stay acute care hospitals located in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

 As stated above, this study was performed using cross-sectional data culled from a national database of all 50 states, and is clearly of greater quality and inspires more confidence compared to the small studies often cited to support claims of the alleged superior skills of EM residency trained physicians over their experienced, non-EM residency trained ER colleagues ( AAEM: Board Certification, Articles on Quality of Care ). Aside from having small samples, these other studies  were performed with less stringent methodologies (mostly retrospective reviews)  performed in only one hospital or at most, compare one hospital with another, mostly examining the effects of the introduction of an ER residency training program, the results of which can not, by any stretch of the imagination, be extrapolated to demonstrate what the AAEM and ABEM claim, that EM residency trained physicians have significantly superior clinical outcomes compared with non-EM residency trained physicians.

This quality study shows otherwise. In the discussion, it is interesting to note that the authors are hesitant to state outright what their results show, namely that when looking at nationally defined clinical criteria, non-EM residency trained and EM residency trained physicians  give the same quality care.  Instead, they state that the measures they used

“may be too simple to demonstrate the value of EM physicians. Future efforts to assess the role of EM training in ED quality should focus more on measures that demonstrate the unique skills of EM-trained physicians.”

What “unique skills”? The authors themselves admit that they chose these measures based on quality studies endorsed by professional societies.  What the authors may be hesitant to acknowledge due to the controversy currently raging in the EM community, is that there is no significant difference in quality between EM residency trained physicians and experienced non-EM residency trained physicians, certainly not enough to warrant paying non-EM residency trained physicians much less and removing their much needed presence in the ERs.

I have been a practiced-trained emergency physician for more than 20 years, having just missed the ABEM window to sit for the boards. I sat for the American Board of Physician Specialties exams in emergency medicine in 1995, and have since re-certified. I am the medical director for a rural ED in North Carolina.

I am continually amazed at the emotion evoked by this subject, especially by residency trained emergency physicians. Are physicians like me taking jobs from the residency trained doctors? I can’t get one of you to even look at my ED; you prefer referral centers and a significantly higher number of patients. There is a crisis out here, and you guys are concerned about advertising? Where are these advertisements? As fellow physicians interested in patient care, wouldn’t you prefer that the rural emergency physicians calling you at least proved their competence in emergency medicine in some credible way? Go ahead, and blow your horn about your residency training; you deserve it. It is a great sacrifice you endured, and it made most of you better emergency physicians, much more so than the testing you do at a computer after a weeklong class.

But take a look outside your bubble of medical center meccas at the shambles that is rural health care secondary to a massive physician shortage. Our ED volume is growing exponentially as primary care disintegrates, and the economics require more physician extenders with less supervision. Wouldn’t it be nice if ACEP, ABEM, AOBEM, and AAPS could come together to show this country that we recognize the problem, that together we are going to ensure that they receive the best possible care no matter what ED they walk into, and that the physician they shake hands with is supported by his peers in the profession?

Meanwhile, I will continue working in the environment I have grown accustomed to and now prefer with the knowledge that there will always be work for me until the day I retire because no one is beating down our doors for a job. Someday soon, no one will want my job unless we work together.

Scott L. Korn, DO
Rutherfordton, NC

By TODD ACKERMAN
HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Oct. 29, 2010, 10:52PM

I don’t think the American College of Emergency Physicians and all the powers-that-be have the patients’ best interests at heart. These people are self-serving and self-absorbed. Their interest is to keep salaries very high for residency trained emergency physicians. These residency trained physicians will never go to underserved areas where they are needed; they will remain around the cultural centers, commanding higher salaries and enjoying the amenities of city living. The underserved areas will continue to suffer, and have a lack of or diminished physician services.

The newly residency trained doctor will not want to work the long laborious night shifts or odd hours, and most likely will not want to work more than the usual work week when the hospital is in a pinch. The hospital will find itself still turning to even more expensive locums coverage. This is what ACEP and its companions want because who will most likely be the locums owner and provider? Probably the same residency trained doctors group or some similar type of arrangement.

These are some of the reasons that ACEP and its companions want to rule out ABPS, family, and internal medicine doctors from working in emergency departments. I don’t think it has a lot to do with training or the ability to work an emergency department at all. I don’t think you can tell a hospital administrator with confidence that a doctor just out of residency is more capable of working in an emergency department than a 20-year veteran emergency physician who has worked more than 4,000 hours a year for 20 years in an emergency department.

I have nothing against residency training. If a practitioner knows when he finishes medical school that emergency medicine is the field that he wants to pursue, then go into an emergency medicine residency. But, like most things in life, nothing is perfect. We finish medical school, chose our paths, and for whatever reasons decide that something else may be more attractive than what we chose. So maybe we find one of those small hospitals that will allow doctors residency trained in something other than emergency medicine to work in the emergency department because of need and because they cannot find a board certified residency trained emergency physician at any price who wants to come to Timbuktu to practice mistake-free medicine because we all know residency trained doctors never get sued and never make mistakes.

No one in emergency medicine wants a practice track, but it is still needed, and as long as there are not enough residency trained physicians to cover our emergency departments, some hospitals will have to use internists or family practitioners to cover their departments. The way to ensure that these physicians have the knowledge of emergency medicine is to offer them certification. If a family practitioner or internist wants to work in the emergency department, ABPS or some other entity should offer testing before the doctor ever works in the emergency department. Maybe an airway clinic or some type of anesthesia course also should be offered prior to the physician working in the emergency department. This would better serve the public and better ensure patient safety than fighting over certification, which only boils down to a fight over money.

My message to ACEP is this: When you can tell me that state regulations will allow your residency trained doctors to drop their malpractice insurance because they are so perfect, I will believe that only residency trained doctors should be in emergency departments. We all have to carry malpractice, which means that the public doesn’t believe in any of us, so to better protect them and ourselves, why don’t we unite and develop solutions that include all of us? There is enough room at the table; visits keep going up, and people keep coming. Let’s quit acting like wolves and pigs, and act like humans who can talk and work things out, and come up with solutions instead these turf battles.

John Stanton, DO
Horsham, PA

COMMENT:

“I have never seen this type of idiocy in any profession other than medicine.”

Thank you for your letter, Dr. Stanton. I would venture to add that not only has “this type of idiocy” not been seen in any other profession except medicine, but the level of  abuse and vituperation hurled mainly by AAEM (see Dr. Scaletta’s Nasty Comments)  over the decades since ABEM  prematurely and mistakenly closed its practice track, even in medicine, can only be found in the specialty of Emergency Medicine, much to its eternal shame.

“Turf wars” occur between specialties on a regular basis. Even now, radiologists and emergency physicians battle over who is qualified to do ultrasounds in the ER;  plastic surgeons, ENTs, and ophthalmologists argue over who is best qualified to do eye lifts; Dermatologists and cosmetic surgeons maintain that they should be the only ones who should do botox and restylane injections, the list is endless.

However,  most of these other “turf wars” have been conducted in semi-civilized, collegial discourse between specialty groups without resorting to demeaning, occasionally libelous speech which has been the hallmark of the rhetoric of AAEM and its minions.

And instead of healing the rift and seeking solutions for ALL ER physicians, not just the ABEM certified,  ACEP has exacerbated the divide by siding with AAEM, making non-EM residency trained physicians like Dr. Stanton even more disenfranchised. This is a failure of leadership and policy that can only be described as tragic.

Fortunately, the American Academy of Family Physicians has stepped into the void left by ACEP and has been more proactive in advocating for the significant number of its members who do practice Emergency Medicine. They also have enough foresight to offer solutions to the EP shortage in the rural areas by sanctioning EM fellowships, which of course, the EM leadership is fighting tooth and nail.  (see: EM Fellowships for FPs: Bane or Boon?)

Let us hope that the bullying tactics of AAEM and ACEP do not win the day. The only way to combat this would be to support ABPS and AAFP in its efforts, such as during the Texas Medical Board meeting.

LINKS:

GruntDoc

“Affirmed”!

and with that, the NY Appellate Court, seemingly sealed the dismissal of ABPS’s suit against NY-DOH, forcing a possible showdown before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Appellate Court, gave short shrift to the strong arguments made by ABPS’s lawyer, Mr. Michael Sussman, easily finding for NY State, without reasoning or gravitas.  

Not that the Court needed a reason. You see, actions by this or any state, wherein the regulation(s) involve health education and welfare and not race, gender or nationality, gets subject to a legal analysis called, “rational basis”. And DW wants you to know that “rational” is used loosely, we mean really loosely, we mean even, irrationally.

Here is what occurred;

(1) New York has a physician website that lists doctors as emergency medicine board certified IF they did a residency in emergency medicine,  no problem there,

(2) an organization called ABEM [The American Board of Emergency Medicine, owned by the American Medical Association] lobbied New York to list MDs with its certification as board certified, whether or not they had done a residency in emergency medicine.

(3) the ABPS [American Board of Physician Specialties, certifies experienced ER doctors who have done residencies such as surgery, family practice and internal medicine AND have at least 5 years experience in emergency medicine practice, not owned by the AMA, having a patient first position] sued  because except for the emergency medicine residency requirement, their ER doctors meet and exceed the criteria, permitting the ABEM non ER residency trained to be able to advertise themselves as board certified.

(4) ABPS contended that if the ABEM/AMA doctor did not do a residency s/he should not be listed on the State’s website following the rule. But that if such a doctor certified by its competitor could be listed, then ABPS doctors should be listed as well.

(5) It is even simpler, ABPS said there should be a site where all ER docs should be listed, and in fact the State could list the certifying board, and whether or not an emergency medicine residency was done. ABPS believes that the best ER docs are residency trained in a relevant specialty and experienced with more than five years practice and does not accept the AMA tenet that three (3) years of emergency medicine is enough. Some hospitals agree and have even added another 4th year. However, that still does not trump greater than 5 years of experience.

 A simple and rational argument; if the rule says, you have to be emergency medicine trained to be board certified in new york, ABPS argued, then why are non emergency trained ER docs listed as certified. Was it simply because they had grandfathered certification by the AMA?

All that seems simple enough. And yet, the courts in New York, ruled against the ABPS    essentially aiding and abetting the business of the AMA/ABEM, on the basis that New York’s action was “rational”- The sort of irrational technicality that only lawyers and judges can understand. the sort of irrationality that allows criminals to get away with their crime(s).

DW asks, when did New York get into the business of aiding and abetting bad actors who seek to destroy competitor organizations with complete disregard for patient welfare issues, such as adequate access to Emergency Care?

DW has learned that there are hospitals in upstate New York, that don’t have and cannot recruit any ER doctors. Moreover, superior ABPS ER physicians are excluded from the Emergency Medicine workforce because of the AMA’s predatory action; now assisted by the state.  

DW wonders who the Court would prefer seeing if they had an emergency: a physician trained in a relevant specialty e.g. surgery, medicine, family practice, anesthesiology, pediatrics, with at least 5 years experience as an ER attending such as the ABPS certified physicians; OR, a physician who only completed a three (3) year residency in emergency medicine but was certified by the ABEM/AMA. If the court is confused, ask the patients in Upstate New York, or indeed throughout the state.

PATIENTS PREFER EXPERIENCED AND EXPERT PHYSICIANS, THAT’S JUST COMMON SENSE. 
Unfortunately, as we all know “common sense” isn’t so common, and as it turns out, in NY state, “rational” isn’t rational either.
INCIDENTALLY, A RECENT NATIONAL STUDY HAS SHOWN THAT EM RESIDENCY TRAINING DOES NOT IMPROVE QUALITY OF CARE.  (see EM Residency Training and Quality Measures)

What were the judges thinking? CLEARLY, THEY WEREN’T THINKING FOR THEMSELVES BUT MERELY CHOSE TO LISTEN TO AMA/ABEM TO THE DETRIMENT OF THE PEOPLE OF NEW YORK.

For Episode 2, go to Cartoon Network

Sunday 10:30 PM on Cartoon Network Adult Swim

TRANSPLANTING A TWISTED PARODY

by Mike Hale  NYT.com

BY Rob Corddry’s own count, he did a hundred interviews when his Web series “Childrens Hospital” appeared in 2008 in which he said that it was “in no way a television idea,” and that a television version “will never happen.”

So, of course, it happened. “Childrens Hospital” begins its new life as a television series Sunday night, part of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming, making Mr. Corddry either a liar or a very bad prognosticator. As he did postproduction work recently at a North Hollywood editing studio, he chose to plead ignorance when asked why his show, among hundreds of online series, should be one of the few to make the jump to the slightly bigger screen.

“We have a very good relationship with the people over at Warner Brothers,” he said, referring to the company that owns thewb.com, where his show first lived, and is a corporate sibling of Adult Swim. “Beyond that I have no idea.”

He’s more definitive about the inspiration for “Childrens Hospital,” which was born out of the enforced idleness caused by the 2007-8 Writers Guild strike. (The strike was the seedbed for other high-profile Web projects like “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” with Neil Patrick Harris, and the Lisa Kudrow show “Web Therapy,” which will be seen on Showtime later this year.)

“The idea was born of child abuse, essentially,” Mr. Corddry said. At a hospital with his daughter, who had injured her arm, he was taken by the comic possibilities of the terrifying scene: “scared parents, crying mothers, tiny bodies on tiny gurneys.”

A result was an unsparing parody and, in its twisted way, a celebration of mainstream hospital shows, packed into 10 episodes of about five minutes each. The primary target was “Grey’s Anatomy,” with nods to “ER” and “Scrubs” and a subtext of deep affection for “M*A*S*H.”

Doctors committed darkly humorous varieties of malpractice when they weren’t breaking up or making out, sometimes with their young patients. Mr. Corddry wore slasher-movie clown makeup as Dr. Blake Downs, who refused to operate, believing instead in the healing power of laughter.

Getting the online show made wasn’t necessarily a huge challenge. “Studios were green-lighting tons of Web shows and treating it as near-free development,” Mr. Corddry said. But what made “Childrens Hospital” stand out from the start was its cast, an unusually accomplished group in the anonymous and poorly paid world of Web series.

In addition to Mr. Corddry, with his “Daily Show” and film credentials, it included Megan Mullally (“Will and Grace”), Lake Bell (“Boston Legal”), Erinn Hayes (“Parenthood”), Ken Marino (“Reaper,” “Party Down”), Nick Offerman (“Parks and Recreation”), Ed Helms (“The Office”) and Jason Sudeikis (“Saturday Night Live,” “30 Rock”).

“I don’t know what to say,” Mr. Corddry said. “We got everybody we wanted. We went up to our friends and, uh …. ”

Jonathan Stern, an executive producer and writer on the show along with Mr. Corddry, leaped in. “It was faith in Rob and his abilities and what he’d bring to it,” he said. “And knowing that they’d have a good time on it with their friends, and knowing, what’s the worst that will happen? We’ll have two days of doing so-so material.”

After the Web series was posted, both Adult Swim and Comedy Central approached Warner Brothers with the idea of adapting it for television; Adult Swim won what Mr. Corddry called “a very low-stakes bidding war.” He, Mr. Stern and their fellow executive producer David Wain managed to keep most of the cast together for the television show (Ms. Bell, committed to the HBO series “How to Make It in America,” will appear in only four episodes) while adding new regulars like Malin Akerman, Henry Winkler and Kurtwood Smith.

The quality and familiarity of the ensemble is a large part of the answer to the earlier question Mr. Corddry left hanging, regarding why “Childrens Hospital” has been able to follow the path to television blazed by Web series like “quarterlife” and “Sanctuary.”

“Megan Mullally, herself, green-lights a show,” he acknowledged. “I think that’s our main strength.”

Ms. Mullally plays the Chief, an oversexed chief surgeon who flails about on crutches and is an obvious take-off on Dr. Kerry Weaver, the character Laura Innes played for 15 seasons on “E.R.” She said she called Ms. Innes, a fellow Northwestern alumna, before shooting the Web series: “I was like, mmm, just in case. Just in case. But she thought it was great.”

The actors and writers have more room to breathe now that “Childrens Hospital” is a television series, but not much. The episodes for Adult Swim are 15 minutes long (11 ½ minutes after commercials); they will be shown in a half-hour slot at 10:30 p.m. with another 15-minute show, “Delocated.” The original Web episodes have been combined, two at a time, into television episodes that will be shown beginning Sunday. The new episodes will begin on Aug. 22.

The difference between making 5-minute and 11.5-minute shows was substantial. “Essentially the Web series was a series of sketches,” Mr. Corddry said. “The TV series, there has to be some semblance of a story. Unfortunately, because I have no idea how to write that.”

Mr. Winkler and Mr. Smith help carry the expanded story lines, as a wacky administrator and a villain intent on suppressing a cure for cancer. Mr. Stern cautioned against putting too much stock in the plot, however.

“Eleven and a half minutes made us create the veneer of actual story lines and character growth without requiring that we be committed to that,” he said. “We hit all the beats as if the characters were developing and important things were happening and as if there were a beginning, middle and end to the story, but we don’t really have to get too emotionally invested in any of that.”

One change you might expect would be some toning down of the show’s humor, an alternately surreal and raunchy mélange of situations and jokes involving sex, body parts, sex, children, Sept. 11, Puerto Rican midgets and sex. But Mr. Corddry said that editing the original Web episodes for television had just meant bleeping “about a handful of words.”

“It’s sort of the same tone,” he added, speaking of the new episodes. “We get away with a lot on Adult Swim.”

That freedom is part of the attraction for the actors, who find time for “Childrens Hospital” between or during their better-paying gigs. “This show is like any other show we do except the words on the page were much wackier,” said Mr. Marino, who plays the yarmulke-wearing Dr. Glenn Richie and who has also directed an episode.

He was one of several cast members who had gathered at the studio to do audio looping, talk with me and trade jokes. Rob Huebel, who plays the spectacularly clueless Dr. Owen Maestro, had his own reason for sticking with the show: “It’s opened up a lot of doors for me sexually. I can literally have sex with anyone in this room. Anyone. If I wanted to.”

Mr. Corddry’s hopes were more prosaic, if equally unrealistic in the arena of Web series and 15-minute television shows. “I have no ambitions besides keep doing more seasons, as many as they give us,” he said. “And then eventually we’ll just sit back and make money. Right?”

ABMS letter to SenCoffee

ABMS Resorts to State Board Tampering Part 1

Such behavior by the leaders of ABMS is more reminiscent of the actions of corrupt  political bosses, or more recently, CEOs of Exxon and Bear Stearns than the head of a medical specialty certification organization that purports to have the public’s interests at heart. 

This is not the first time that ABPS efforts’ to seek recognition for its diplomates have been blocked via questionable means by organizations who perceive ABPS as a threat.  ABPS certification is recognized in states such as Florida and Texas, and in both states, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), which is supposed to represent ALL Emergency physicians, and not solely those with Emergency Medicine residency training who comprise barely half of the currently practicing EM physician workforce, have made repeated attempts to influence these state medical boards to withdraw their recognition of ABPS board certification. 

In the face of an impending ER physician shortage, it would seem that ACEP, instead of opposing ABPS, should be welcoming and aiding its initiative to provide experienced and skilled ER physicians to the public. It is the utmost hypocrisy and symptomatic of how out of touch they are from real world realities, for the ACEP leadership to continue to proclaim that Emergency medicine residency training is a “gold standard” for ER physicians when a significant number of both ACEP leaders and members are not EM residency trained.  As one of the many comments made on this topic on the ACEP website noted, the ACEP stand on EM residency training is not a “gold standard”, it’s a double standard.

We will be posting Dr. Weiss’ letter to Senator Coffee in full on this site when it becomes available shortly.  At that time, we invite ABMS, ACEP and ABPS to comment.

LINKS:

ABMS Resorts to State Board Tampering Part 2

from EM NEWS: AAPS Ramping Up Campaign for Recognition

Texas Recognizes ABPS Certification

ACEP Releases Statement on Texas Medical Board Action

News from  AAPS vs. NYDOH

Response to Florida ACEP: No Correlation Between Doctors Who Fail to Meet Standard of Care and Board Certification

Florida ACEP: Only EM Trained Doctors Should be Working in ERs

Disposable Doctors 2: ER Docs Fight Back in NY