Event Planning Materials

Quick Information

Hotel: Walter E Washington Convention Center

8:00 am Registration desk will be open
9:00 am A special briefing for medical students and residents/fellows in-training
10:30 am Grassroots advocacy training session
12:45 pm Opening remarks

Additional event planning materials will be made available here as the event date nears.

Full Information

Message from Bob Doherty and Shuan Tomlinson

Welcome to Leadership Day 2016, the College’s annual advocacy day event held in Washington, D.C. that enables ACP to increase its presence on Capitol Hill and bring our issues of concern to U.S. lawmakers. Leadership Day will be held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center (Ballroom C). The Convention Center is a short metro ride or taxi to Congressional offices.

We have an exciting program and experience in store for you, including many educational briefings on the key policies you will be discussing with lawmakers as well as an opportunity for you to socialize with your colleagues.  In this critical election year, Leadership Day is more important than ever and we need our ACP Advocates from across the country to attend this event and speak on behalf of internal medicine and its related subspecialties.  The deadline for Leadership Day registration, March 25th, is fasting approaching so please register now if you have not.  Also, please note that Governors must register themselves for the event.  ACP National does not automatically register its officers.

For only the 3rd time ever, Leadership Day and Internal Medicine 2016 are being held during the same week and in the same location, Washington, DC. These tandem meetings provide a great opportunity for ACP and many more of our members to participate in the public policy process and to bring greater visibility to important issues affecting internists, related subspecialists and their patients.  Leadership Day has had a tremendous track record of successfully improving the status of primary care and educating our legislators on health care policy.

Key policy issues for Leadership Day:

Thanks to the enactment of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) in 2015, the burden of Medicare’s Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) is no longer an issue.  MACRA repealed the formula and set us on a new pathway toward value-based payment and delivery systems.  With the SGR no longer an advocacy priority for ACP, we are now anxious to turn our focus onto other important priorities and we have an exciting line-up of legislative issues for Leadership Day, the majority of which are new.  Some of these new priorities include:

  • Chronic Care Management:  Improving payment, eliminating cost-sharing, and reducing regulatory barriers to chronic care management.
  • Health Information Technology: Reducing the burdens associated with EHR meaningful use regulations and clinical documentation requirements and enhancing usability and operability.
  • Telemedicine: Eliminating payment and regulatory barriers to telemedicine in a way that supports the patient-physician relationship.
  • Behavioral Health and Opioid Abuse:  Reducing barriers to integrating behavioral health into primary care and addressing the related rising death toll from opioid abuse.

Also of importance to ACP is the need to advocate for critical reforms to Graduate Medical Education, including support for vital primary care workforce programs, like the National Health Service Corps and Title VII Health Professions programs.

Leadership Program and Logistics:

The official Leadership Day program will begin Tuesday, May 3 at 12:45 PM with opening remarks from key College leaders followed by in-depth issue briefings by congressional and Administration staff.  Attendees will hear from a host of Washington insiders who will assess the current political environment and its impact on ACP’s issues.

An optional grassroots advocacy training session will be offered on Tuesday morning, May 3, at 10:30 AM to help our first-time attendees prepare for their Hill visits.  The training will be interactive, lively and well worth the time commitment. 

A special briefing for medical students and residents/fellows in-training will be held again this year at 9:00 AM on Tuesday, May 3, at the Washington Convention Center.

The registration desk will be open on Tuesday morning, May 3, at 8:00 AM for attendees to pick up briefing packets and name badges. On Tuesday, a light lunch will also be provided for all participants.

As for evening activities on Tuesday, May 3, there will be two receptions held early that evening, one exclusively for members of the ACP Services PAC and one for medical students and residents/fellows in-training. There will be no formal dinner that evening;  allowing attendees to enjoy dinner on their own in Washington or gathering with their chapters to coordinate for the following day’s congressional meetings. A list of nearby restaurants including relatively inexpensive ones will be provided.

We will start our Capitol Hill Day, Wednesday, May 4 at the Washington Convention Center with breakfast, key announcements, and possible presentations. Immediately following, attendees will disperse to their scheduled congressional appointments on Capitol Hill. Please note that the Washington Convention Center is a short taxi cab or metro ride away from Capitol Hill and attendees are responsible for those transportation costs. A hospitality/debriefing room on Capitol Hill (HC-8 in the Capitol) will be available throughout the day of May 4 for attendees, starting at 10:30am.  This room is provided to attendees to allow them to rest between their meetings, have a snack, and otherwise compare notes with their chapter delegation members.

Leadership Day Registration: The Leadership Day online registration form is available on the Leadership Day webpage.  Please note the deadline is:  March 25.

Hotel/Flight Reservations:  We realize that most all of you will be attending both Leadership Day and the Internal Medicine meeting that follows.  While you are welcome to stay at any of the hotels set aside for the Internal Medicine meeting, we do have specific hotels designated for Leadership Day, which we encourage you to use. You can find a list of those hotels and information on how to make hotel reservations online.

As you are aware, three major airports service the Washington D.C. area, Ronald Reagan National Airport, Dulles International Airport, and the Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI).  You may find substantial savings with flights into BWI. While the trip from BWI to downtown Washington is longer than the trip from Ronald Reagan National Airport, limousine/shuttle service is available.  BWI is only a few miles farther from downtown Washington than Dulles Airport. During weekday travel, MARC trains make frequent trips from the BWI airport to Washington’s Union Station (one-way ticket starts at $11).  A free shuttle is available for the 5-minute ride from the BWI Airport, baggage claim level to the BWI rail station.  Go to: http://www.bwiairport.com/en/travel/ground-transportation/trans/marc  for more information and the MARC Penn Line train schedule.

Arranging Your Chapter’s Hill Meetings for Wednesday, May 4:  For those chapters that are scheduling their own congressional meetings, contact information for U.S. Senators and U.S. House Members is available online on http://capwiz.com/acponline/dbq/officials/ – (pocketsize congressional directories will also be available at the registration desk on Leadership Day). For those chapters scheduling their own meetings, please fill out and fax to Shuan Tomlinson at 202-835-0042 the form entitled “Appointments Arranged Form.”  Having this information in advance will give the governmental affairs staff the information they need to tailor their advice to you for your individual meetings.  The deadline for chapters to elect the scheduling services of ACP National has past. Those chapters that requested the scheduling services of ACP National will receive their schedules in two ways this year.  ACP will debut a new Leadership Day schedule “App” for mobile devices so schedules can be accessed electronically.  We will also continue to provide the hardcopy schedules for those chapters at Leadership Day on May 3 and May 4. Any chapter member who has registered for Leadership Day should coordinate with their chapter Governor for scheduling purposes.

For other information or questions about Leadership Day, please contact Shuan Tomlinson, Senior Analyst, State Health Policy & Grassroots at 1-800-338-2746, Ext. 4547 or by email at stomlinson@acponline.org.

Chapter participation in Leadership Day and the Advocates for Internal Medicine Network (AIMn) program are the bedrocks of ACP’s advocacy program.  Thank you for your chapter's support and we look forward to seeing you at Leadership Day!