March 2023: Trent Emerick
This month's Member Spotlight features Dr. Trent Emerick, associate chief of pain medicine at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and associate professor in the department of anesthesiology and perioperative medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Dr. Emerick is the ASRA Pain Medicine delegate to the American Medical Association's (AMA's) Relative Value Scale Update Committee and was nominated for the Member Spotlight by ASRA Pain Medicine President-Elect David Provenzano, MD, who described him as "very knowledgeable and passionate about" the AMA work.
Dr. Emerick is the director of quality improvement and innovation in the Chronic Pain Division at UPMC and also serves as the designated team pain physician/specialist for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He is also the founder and president of Vanish Therapeutics, Inc.
In 2021, Dr. Emerick became a fellow in the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA). He was a finalist in the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM)/MIT Hacking Medicine Innovation Challenge in 2022. He has an extensive publications list, serves as a mentor to many residents, and is involved in a number of funded and non-funded research projects. His interests include operating room management, pain clinic management and efficiency; operational efficiency and six-sigma lean methodology related to healthcare; and craniofacial pain, chronic abdominal pain using ultrasound-based regional anesthesia techniques, and cancer-related pain.
A member of the Joint ASRA/ASA/AAPM/ASAM Addiction Medicine and Pain Medicine Committee and a member of the AAPM Opioid Advisory Committee, Dr. Emerick also served as a technical expert panel member on the ASA-ASRA Pain Medicine Quality Measure Review.