By Liz Freeman
The Naples Daily News
LEE COUNTY, Fla. — Lee County’s decision to ground its medical helicopter for patient transports could delay gaining national accreditation due to a lack of current flight data, according to the national organization.
In addition, a federal lawsuit filed by a former flight paramedic alleging improper billing and retaliation also will be considered as part of background checks, according to the Commission of Accreditation of Medical Transport Systems.
“It may or may not affect accreditation,” said Eileen Frazer, executive director of the accreditation organization, based in Anderson, S.C. “It all depends. That is one if the questions they have to answer.”
Lee EMS officials suspended Tuesday the MEDSTAR program and terminated its operations chief and three pilots to prepare for seeking national accreditation as a critical care program.
Frazer said she doesn’t understand why county EMS officials decided to suspend the entire operation when they intend to pursue the national ranking.
“I don’t know what the purpose of that is,” she said. “I’ve never heard of that. If you are going to do this, you’ve got to have current data.”
Kim Dickerson, EMS chief and deputy director of public safety, said grounding the program and letting go of the four staff members was necessary to start putting a new crew together that can work toward accreditation.
“We want to design our program around the critical care standards,” she said. “The team that we had in place, we didn’t feel it was the right team to get us where we wanted to go.”
The plan is to hire a new director of flight operations who has accreditation experience and other staff to start collecting the flight data that’s necessary, she said. The accreditation standards during that process will be a benchmark to use, Dickerson said.
But a year’s worth of flight data is necessary first before the national organization will consider an application, Frazer said. That’s in addition to about 100 standards that come into play, including accident reports with the National Transportation Safety Board, said Frazer, with the accreditation commission.
The MEDSTAR program did have a crash in August 2009, where the helicopter was a total loss. The three crew survived.
“It doesn’t mean if they have had an accident that they are not safe,” Frazer said.
All told, 149 medical flight programs around the United States have achieved the voluntary accreditation, of which five are in Florida. They operate in Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville, Miami and Largo. The fifth company is based in Colorado and comes into the state when there are patient transport requests.
Frazer could not say, as a matter of policy, whether Lee EMS has indicated it intends to pursue accreditation.
When MEDSTAR is grounded, Lee EMS plans to rely on mutual aid support from other medical flight operations, including Collier’s Medflight, Tampa’s Bayflite and a private company in Largo.
Collier officials said Tuesday that its one Medflight helicopter will remain primarily focused on serving Collier residents and visitors and will be deemed a resource of last resort for Lee.
With regard to the federal lawsuit, it was filed in May by former flight pilot Angela Holbrook. She reported in 2007 that her supervisor was altering billing logs to maximize profits, according to the suit.
In particular, she said the MEDSTAR program did not have a certain certification through the Federal Aviation Administration to bill at the higher rates with Medicaid and Medicare, the lawsuit said.
In addition, the lawsuit said the program lacked documented procedures to transport psychiatric patients.
The lawsuit said she was removed from the flight crew “due to a lack of trust” by her supervisor in early 2008. Shortly afterward, the supervisor she complained about orchestrated a complaint by her co-workers that she was unsafe, which prompted an investigation by the human resources department, according to the lawsuit.
Holbrook was put back on flight status when the human resources investigation found the claim against her was unfounded.
But she continued to raise concerns about improper billing practices and she was reprimanded again, according to the lawsuit.
In May 2008, she also called her supervisor to question a treatment order from a Lee Memorial physician regarding a patient. Even though she ultimately followed the doctor’s order, her supervisor accused her of improper conduct, her license privileges were revoked and she was fired, according to the lawsuit.
John Wilson, Lee County’s director of public safety, said Wednesday that EMS cannot comment on Holbrook’s lawsuit.
When asked that another flight pilot, Mac McAllister, said ill feelings between management and the flight and paramedic crew over safety matters is behind the move to let go the flight crew, Wilson said that was not the case.
“From my perspective, that is Mac’s opinion,” Wilson said. “We don’t share it.”
He reiterated that EMS is looking for a director of operations who has experience in accreditation to rebuild the program. The pilots were told when they were let go Tuesday that they can reapply for jobs when that accreditation goal is achieved, Wilson said.
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