{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/emergency-medicine-physicians/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Emergency Medicine Physicians",
    "soc_code": "29-1214",
    "category": "Healthcare",
    "us_employment": 32880,
    "median_annual_wage": 335550
  },
  "verdict": "SAFE",
  "risk_resistance": 88,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 15,
    "embodiment": 18,
    "liability_shield": 20,
    "trust_premium": 15,
    "judgment_accountability": 20
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Documentation, coding, ECG pre-reads and discharge-instruction generation are already being eaten by ambient scribes and algorithmic triage scores, which is why this sits at 15 rather than 19 — but intubating a bleeding trauma patient, reducing a dislocated shoulder, or placing a chest tube in a hypotensive pneumothorax has no digital substitute.",
    "embodiment": "An 18 reflects that essentially every shift involves procedures on unstable, sometimes combative or contaminated patients in a resuscitation bay you don't control — blood, vomit, C-collars, code carts — with the remaining 2 points off only because charting and consult calls happen at a workstation.",
    "liability_shield": "State medical licensure plus board certification is non-negotiable, EMTALA makes you personally responsible for screening and stabilizing every patient who walks in regardless of ability to pay, and your name is on the disposition when a missed dissection becomes a malpractice claim — there is no higher configuration than this.",
    "trust_premium": "Patients arrive as strangers and rarely see you again, which caps this below the 18-20 of primary care, but the 15 reflects that consent for procedures, breaking news of a death to family, and persuading a chest-pain patient to accept admission all collapse if the person in front of them isn't a trusted physician.",
    "judgment_accountability": "Deciding in under ten minutes whether an undifferentiated abdominal pain goes to the OR, the CT scanner, or home — and running a code where you call time of death — is the archetype of an ambiguous high-stakes call made on incomplete data with no one senior to defer to at 3 a.m."
  },
  "rationale": "The core of emergency medicine is physically laying hands on undifferentiated, often uncooperative patients: airway management, central lines, chest tubes, reductions, ultrasound at the bedside, and deciding in minutes who is dying and who can wait. AI is genuinely good at the paperwork layer — ambient scribing of ED notes, discharge instructions, coding, ECG and imaging pre-reads, triage risk scores — and that will compress documentation time rather than the physician's role. Licensure, EMTALA obligations, and personal malpractice exposure mean a board-certified human owns every disposition decision.",
  "outlook": "In ten years AI will have taken most of the charting and pre-read burden and may modestly increase patient throughput per physician, but the resuscitation bay, the procedures, and the legally accountable disposition decision still require a licensed body in the room.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift: ambient scribes (Nuance DAX, Abridge in ED settings), autonomous ECG and CT pre-reads, and auto-generated discharge instructions strip the documentation/coding tier out of the shift, leaving a residual day that is almost entirely procedures, resuscitation, and undifferentiated-complaint disposition. The routine tier shrinking makes the measured remainder less automatable, not more.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      },
      {
        "dimension": "embodiment",
        "change": "If ED boarding and admitted-patient holds continue to worsen (ACEP's boarding crisis declarations, post-2022 data), the physician's day shifts further toward hands-on management of multiple unstable held patients plus procedural sedation, reductions, and difficult airways — physical work in an environment that is unpredictable by definition.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 1
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "A narrow route only: if CMS or a state licensing board requires that the ED attending personally perform a documented in-person evaluation for high-acuity ESI-1/2 presentations rather than accepting APP-with-remote-supervision models, the human-attending encounter becomes a purchased requirement rather than a staffing preference. Watch state scope-of-practice fights and ACEP's position statements on independent APP practice in the ED.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "liability_shield and judgment_accountability are already at 20; EMTALA plus board certification plus personal malpractice exposure cannot be tightened further in a way the register would register. At 88 this occupation is essentially at the practical ceiling — the realistic movement is a few points of task-mix consolidation, not a structural change."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 36180,
        "wage": 239200
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 29260,
        "wage": 239200
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 35100,
        "wage": 239200
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 33680,
        "wage": 239200
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 32880,
        "wage": 335550
      }
    ],
    "from": 2021,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": -9.1,
    "comparable_from": 2021,
    "spans_soc_revision": false
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}