By Brianna Bailey
The Oklahoman
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — Midwest City-based Victory EMS, the only emergency medical service for a sparsely populated part of western Osage County, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Victory serves the towns of Fairfax and Gray Horse in Osage County, as well as Ralston, just across the Arkansas River in neighboring Pawnee County. The company staffs the mostly rural area with a lone ambulance that covers 900 square miles of territory. Victory also provides transfers between facilities in the metro area.
What changes?
The company filed for bankruptcy Feb. 10, reporting less than $50,000 in assets and between $100,000 and $500,000 in debts. Victory remains in business and is responding to calls, but needs time to reorganize as it works with its creditors, said Joe Weaver, a manager for Victory.
“It’s just a slowdown in the collections. The bankruptcy is just to give us a few minutes to reorganize how things are collected and how things get paid,” Weaver said.
The company is based in a gray corrugated metal building inside a mostly vacant Midwest City office park. A single ambulance was parked outside the building Friday afternoon.
The Osage County town of Fairfax, which has a population of about 1,300 people, contracts with Victory EMS for emergency services. The town pays $7,000 a month to Victory to provide ambulance services. Funding for the service comes from a portion of the town’s sales tax revenue.
Fairfax depends on the emergency services provided by Victory to serve a nursing home in the town, as well as the 15-bed Fairfax Community Hospital, Town Clerk Raeann Smith said. Without Victory, Fairfax would have to rely on ambulance service from the Ponca City area, about 30 miles away, Smith said.
“We have to have ambulance service for this part of the state because there is no other service in this area. I’m hoping this is a just a temporary problem,” Smith said.
A pay emergency?
In January 2013, Fairfax paid $6,000 to cover part of Victory EMS’s insurance premiums when the company was short on cash. Fairfax agreed to cover the insurance costs in exchange for a $1,000 reduction in its monthly payments to Victory over six months, according to a report from a local newspaper on the payment.
“They can’t make enough money, but we have to have them here,” Smith said.
Ambulance services have a difficult time making money in sparsely populated parts of Osage County because there are few calls for service, Osage County 911 Director Kay Kelley said. If Victory EMS went out of business, other operators from the area would be able to pick up the slack, but it’s difficult to cover some parts of the county because there isn’t enough business in some areas for EMS companies to operate.
“There are very few ambulance services that have to cover a lot of territory, (and) it’s such a large county that it’s hard to cover because it is such a rural area,” Kelley said. “It’s always an issue and it always comes down to funding.”
Victory averages about one-and-a-half ambulance runs a day in Osage County, or about 45 runs per month, Weaver said.
A previous company owned by Weaver, Pulse EMS, went out of business in 2012, citing financial difficulties.
Prone to problems
A previous incarnation of Pulse EMS, called Central Med EMS, also co-owned by Weaver, was cited by the Oklahoma Health Department in 2007 for 17 instances of call jumping — making ambulance runs to aid victims when other services had ambulances available several miles closer.
Weaver denies he owns Victory and said that he is “just an employee of the company.” Victory was incorporated in 2012 and is registered to Rodney Hanes, a former paramedic who is also identified on Victory’s website as president of the company.
However, when Fairfax entered into a service agreement with Victory, Weaver signed the contract, Smith said. When Fairfax put the contract for city ambulance service out to bid the last time, Victory was the only company to put in a bid, she said. The Oklahoma Labor Department has received four claims from workers against Victory EMS for unpaid wages in the past year.
Detailed information was not available, but in each case the Labor Department found the company to be in violation of the Oklahoma Minimum Wage Act, according to records. Victory has since paid the workers what they were owed, Weaver said.