By Rusty Marks
The Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)
KANAWHA COUNTY, W.Va. — Employees of privately owned, Ohio-based Life Ambulance service say they aren’t listening to police scanners in an attempt to hijack wreck victims and whisk them off to the hospital.
“I’ve never jumped a call in my life,” said Cody Byrd, a 35-year-old Putnam County EMT who also works for Life Ambulance. “We’re not allowed to carry scanners, two-way radios or pagers. If we do, we get fired.”
Officials for the Kanawha County Emergency Ambulance Service have asked the state Office of Emergency Medical Services to investigate complaints that crews from Life Ambulance are showing up at the scenes of traffic accidents to hijack patients or are trying to muscle their way into local emergency rooms to transport patients. County officials believe Life Ambulance crews are getting their tips from police scanners, a practice known as “call-jumping.”
Under state law, county commissions have the authority to set up ambulance authorities and regulate the dispatches of emergency calls. Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper believes the law also gives the county the right to determine who can and who can’t provide emergency ambulance rides.
Jerry Kyle, director of the Office of Emergency Medical Services, said county officials do have the authority to dispatch emergency calls.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean Life Ambulance can’t transport emergency patients in the county. Kyle said private entities such as nursing homes can ask a private ambulance company to transport emergency patients if they want to, though state officials prefer emergency patients be carried on official county ambulances. In Kanawha County, the ambulance authority and Charleston Fire Department are the only agencies authorized for emergency transport.
Kyle said private ambulance crews may also transport emergency patients if they come upon a wreck.
“If they happen upon an accident, they’re not required to stop and render care, but they’re not prohibited by us,” Kyle said.
He added, “What we’re not interested in is a fight over a patient.”
Byrd said that while private ambulance crews don’t have to stop at the scene of an accident, their training and code of ethics dictate that they should try to help. “Even if you’re off the clock, you’ve got a moral obligation,” he said. Byrd said ambulance crews who don’t stop to assist a wreck victim could be sued for not trying to help.
Ambulance crews offer two types of care. One is basic life support, which usually entails routine ambulance trips like a ride from a patient’s home to the doctor’s office or from a medical facility home. Advanced life support requires emergency medical care.
Joe Lynch, director of the Kanawha County Emergency Ambulance Authority, said county officials don’t have a problem with Life Ambulance providing routine ambulance runs.
“Overall, those guys [at Life Ambulance] are doing a decent job at the nursing homes,” Lynch said. “Competition makes us good, as long as it’s on a level playing field.”
But Lynch and other county officials are worried that Life Ambulance crews don’t have the level of training and equipment that county or city ambulance crews have. They worry that in an emergency situation patients won’t get the same level of care on a Life ambulance.
“Everybody who works for Life either works for another ambulance service or a fire department,” Byrd said. “Everybody there is certified just like everyone else in the state.”
Byrd said Life Ambulance usually has 10 to 12 ambulances on the road at any one time, dispatched from the company’s ambulance station in Jefferson. They have the same types of equipment and stock of drugs that the county’s ambulances have, he said.
Kyle said Life Ambulance’s vehicles and staff meet the minimum standards required by the state for ambulance services. “Life Ambulance is a licensed emergency medical service in the state of West Virginia,” he said.
But Carper doesn’t want several different ambulance services running around Kanawha County trying to beat each other to patients.
“It’s a public safety issue,” said Carper, who helped get the emergency ambulance service law passed.
“It used to be a free-for-all,” Carper said. In the old days, he said, local funeral homes fought one another for emergency calls, causing mass confusion.
“There’s the risk of running into each other, running over the policemen, and just the inhumanity of fighting over a body in the street,” he said.
Kyle said Life Ambulance crews are allowed to offer assistance if they happen on a wreck site. But they are prohibited from listening to police scanners and dispatching their vehicles to the scene of an accident.
“That’s against federal law,” he said.
Company representatives say only one Life Ambulance employee has been caught call-jumping, and that employee has since been fired.
“I have guys who do what they’re not supposed to, just like the next guy,” said Doug Avery, chief operations officer for Life Ambulance’s main office in Portsmouth, Ohio.
“But when I find out about it, I take action and put a stop to it.”
Copyright 2008, The Charleston Gazette (West Virginia)