"I live on Blue Angel and almost every morning and evening I get stuck in the long line of traffic being blocked by ECSO and ECFR because of the helicopter landing at the ER. This is almost every day, several times a day and takes at least 30 minutes if not longer each time. Why doesn't the hospital put a landing pad on there property so the helicopter doesn't have to land on Blue Angel and block traffic? Would you look into this PLEASE!! It's been getting more and more frequent. Thank you"
So I have been asking questions of the public safety department about it.
According to the data I now have, we have had 140 life-flight helicopter pick ups/transfers from the newly constructed West Florida Hospital/Perdido Bay Emergency Room Facility at Hwy 98 and Blue Angel Parkway since January 1st.
Normally this would not be an issue--were it not for two details.
#1--there is no helicopter landing facility at this stand-alone ER facility---so when the choppers come and go, the county must send a fire-truck and the ECSO must send a Deputy Sheriff to block traffic on HWY 98.
#2--And for this---the frequent rolling of our firetrucks from Myrtle Grove 3 miles away-- the county is not being compensated.
In addition to all the air transfers via helicopter, the county's ambulances have transferred 900 patients from this facility since the first of the year--for which the county issues bills to the patient and is compensated.
I'm not sure why so many flights are coming into this facility as typically a life-flight situation is uncommon and deals with a major, time-sensitive life-threatening trauma case. Are there really this many life-threatening trauma cases requiring helicopter transfers out of this one small stand alone ER facility in this area of Escambia County?---I'm going to ask what the acuity requirements for air transport vice standard ambulance---are all of these transports for critical patients? and most importantly: Who is paying for this? The patients? Their insurance? This WEAR story from July 7th intimates that many of the local life flight transfers are COVID-19 patients--so I wonder if there is some monetary incentive being paid by the government for all these flights? That would make sense as this practice apparently has ramped-up significantly since the Pandemic.
I'll be looking into this to figure out what we need to do going forward to ensure this practice does not shut down traffic and pull our firetrucks out of the stations on this frequent of a basis--I've never heard anything like this before. Stay tuned, more to come on this.
See the total number of ambulance transfers from this location here. See the helicopter flights that have shut down traffic since the first of the year and required the dispatch of one of our firetrucks here, below.
6 comments:
Commissioner Bergosh, when I was trying (unsuccessfully) to get the Board to look into the sudden change in the first call contract on air lifts from a company located in Escambia to one located in Santa Rose (speaking in terms of the business/economic ramifications rather than the distance traveled), I had a couple of people from Fire and EMS explain to me in detail how these contracts and logistics work.
I am completely pulling from memory now, so this could be wrong--hopefully somebody who knows better than I do will correct this and/or expand on it. But I remember one of the really knowledgeable people trying to explain it to me saying that a copter company has to meet a minimum amount of calls of they won't maintain their licensing--something like that. And that we had too many companies competing for the business in the area, and that there was a company/companies who weren't getting enough calls and so needed to find ways to beef them up.
Also--and this I remember very clearly--it was represented to me that there was a higher up in Escambia EMS who had a close personal relationship with a higher-up at one of these air transport companies. I do remember checking out that relationship and the comment seemed legit. Whether that had or has *anything* to do with *any* of our air transport I have no idea.
The main thing is to get with somebody who actually knows how it works and will give you the straight dope. i.e. avoid administration--general admin, EMS admin, Fire admin--like the plague. Go straight to the medics, and include those who are now or used to be an air medic working for one or more of these companies. You'll never get a straight answer otherwise.
-Melissa Pino
Commissioner Bergosh,
Your concerns were brought to my attention from a family member of mine. I happened to be one of these flights last month and I thank God every day that I was. I had a heart attack and had to be taken to another hospital for a procedure to open my heart vessel back up.
As I was sitting there with my husband fearing the unknown, the nurse told me that it was a 3 hour wait for a ambulance to get me to a bigger hospital. My nurse And doctor also told me that They feared waiting that long. They decided I needed to go to by a helo. Within a little more than 30 minutes, I was under the knife and the heart doctor said I had a widow maker vein clogged. I would have died sitting there waiting on that ambulance.
It seems the issue isn’t the Perdido ER or the helicopters. It’s the ambulances of the county. The leadership is a joke as proven time and time again with all the scandals and what not.
My helicopter bill was for 137 dollars. I paid more than that 3 years ago when I had to use a Escambia county ambulance. It was over 700 dollars!
I apologize to my fellow county citizens that the doctors and nurses at that emergency department felt my life was more important than them getting a Starbucks drink before work. Please let these professionals continue to make these decisions. It could be you in need next time.
Perdido Bay is nothing more than an urgent care and should be labeled as such. Go there for a cough or stitches that's about. If a facility can not provide the care needed for a patient how is it anyone else's fault but that facility. 900 hundred transports from Perdido Bay to other hospitals is a horrible waste of an already extremely overburdened EMS service. Not just Escambia, nation wide. That 3 hour wait is also no one's fault except those abusing the 911 system everyday for tooth and head aches.
Just look into making them get a Helipad which is concrete and paint. It might be cost effective to have the county build the helipad at cost if West Florida intends to drag it out?
Don't worry about conspiracy theory bs. Just get the helipad built. The rest of it is none of your business. You have other things to work on besides chasing conspiracy theories.
As for "conspiracy theories," a source at the County, who is a person of integrity and knows what s/he's talking about, confirmed the following:
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"To answer your question the area is saturated with helicopters and Life Flight lost their CPON in Escambia County. Air Methods is talking about shutting the base down. LF and WFH made a deal that they charge ground transport fee if they would use them for transport to basically get their numbers up. Second problem is EMS is so overwhelmed due to staffing they can barely answer emergencies. So when PBER has to wait over 30 they can call LF. And probably less than 5% are critical most are just direct admits to WFH."
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1. Please understand that this is not a criticism from this person or me of the medics and EMTs that staffing continues to be such a problem for Escambia EMS. That's on Janice Gilley, Dr. Edler, and many of the managers they advanced or brought in, who have no business in the roles they were awarded. And whatever combination of ineptitude and intentionally driving EMS into the ground Gilley is running. I don't know how many times people can scream "It's not fixed it's worse than ever!!" before the Board will finally see and hear through administration's smoke and mirrors. Jason Rogers will no doubt be a huge asset to the County, if and when administration gets the hell out of the way and stops giving him disinformation before throwing him under the bus when he acts on it. Bottom line is that our amount of institutional knowledge that fled or was forced out since Gilley hit the door is appalling. Talent and commitment to service like that doesn't grow on trees, and Gilley took the best that was left of the Department and annihilated it through various means, for nothing more than her own special interest and the continual favoritism gauntlet she orchestrates to keep people off-kilter and thus job-scared. The results would have been bad enough if we had not entered a pandemic. The problem isn't covid; it's that the department had already been stretched to the breaking point by mismanagement and toxic environment long before the virus ever hit.
2. By no means am I making the argument there isn't a reason for the service at this location--I would have zero idea. Perhaps even if EMS was running at top speed there would still be a need in situations such as the one Anonymous 4:32 PM laid out (and thank goodness he's okay). The point is, how can any ancillary problems be identified, analyzed, and fixed, when the core management issues are contributing to the chaos that has been growing for a long time now. It's impossible to say what would be needed at that location if our EMS was properly staffed. If all the changes that needed to happen clear last spring when all of this was brought to light were finally enacted tomorrow, it would take a long time to build up the quality of and numbers of work force that have been run off. It may never happen. Those that chose to leave and gave up their hard-earned years towards retirement just to get out the hell have zero incentive to consider coming back.
--Melissa Pino
I appreciate your taking this issue on for the area. I noticed some unfair attacks about this issue on your face book page. It is funny how some really punch you about an issue and when you respond, correcting them, they complain you're rude. So funny. So, Pensacola Fire Lt. Nathan Edler says you jumped on this issue because another politician did, but you set him straight saying you heard about it from other constituents and are working it. Edler then attacks you personally and calls you a joke. The Joke is coming when Mayor Grover, who Edler calls a turd all the time in the firehouse, fires him. Then Jeremy Fisk says you're only addressing the issue as another superior politician made you do it. And when you set him straight saying there is no chain of command for elected officials, he says you're rude. Again, too funny. Keep up the great work an ignore the wanna be politicians who have no courage to get into the arena. Also, Some woman named Blackheart attacked you in the paper. She says Beulah wants more housing on OLF-8. I say resist. She wants what Navy Federal wants, but that's not what the residents want.
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