 |
| Thumbs up for some huge moves in the right direction in our EMS department. Where is the press coverage of the positive developments, though? |
That didn't happen.
The board instead was told we had to meet in executive session before we could make improvments and move in the new direction.
So the board met, and as of last Thursday, we took action to go in a new direction with respect to our County Medical Director slot.
On Thursday, the board approved a sweeping overhaul of how we will operate going forward--moving toward a University hospital-based form of medical director staff position--with a primary and a co-medical director at our disposal 24-7, 365 days yearly. As a part of the contract we will also get updated protocols (within the first 4 months after contract execution).
Our current protocols are more than a decade old, were written by a medical director who was with us like 20 years ago. The existing EMS medical director never brought forward new ones. Also, no additional training that was spotlighted publicly as a "got to have" ever happened so far as I have been told over the last several years. So, not sure why these things didn't happen--- but it appears to be a moot point going forward. With this new contract--and this new direction---we will also receive additional professional development and training opportunities for our Paramedics and EMT's---at no additional cost.
So this vote and this move was kind of a huge deal, and I was glad to see it move forward via a predictable 4-1 vote in favor (D2 voted against). Kudos to our new Public Safety Director Eric Gilmore who is doing a TREMENDOUS job and also big props to new EMS Chief David Torsell--who is also doing some fantastic work in very short order.
In summary--there are some GREAT things happening in EMS. Big raises, big changes in Medical Director Role--and yet, it's like a redwood fell in a forest and nobody heard it. Why?
I would have thought with all the drama in the press over percieved issues in EMS, recordkeeping, and prosecutions--not to mention the huge payout the board had to make due to the ball being dropped on the way a paramedic was not given due process--- along with all the alleged wrongdoing, nefarious conduct accusations, etc. etc. etc.---that someone in the press would have done a story on this tremendously profound, positive big step forward by the board??
Nope. Crickets.
Guess it's either:
A. Too much positive, good news
or
B. Deals with someone the powers that be do not want to discuss.
Either way--it happened and it is a good thing.
The press can ignore but they shouldn't. They shouldn't refuse to accept the reality of this situation. It's happening.
17 comments:
Commissioner Bergosh,
What is Dr. Edler’s status as an employee of the county now? We all know she was placed on leave but has her position been eliminated? Has she been fired with cause? What is the status on that?
It’s so nice to see positive things happening, yet very concerning that the media (including social media pages) just ignore it. Their agenda has become clear as day.
“In summary--there are some GREAT things happening in EMS. Big raises, big changes in Medical Director Role--and yet, it's like a redwood fell in a forest and nobody heard it. Why?”
They heard it but it doesn’t align with their agenda to vilify the board so this positive news will be ignored, and when it’s finally addressed it’ll be nit picked apart by those that don’t have an ounce of happiness in their souls.
Thanks for your vote to move forward with this.
I also wonder what Dr. Edler's employment status is as well. Doug Underhill posted on ECW that she was on Family/ Paternity leave.
Anonymous 10:54--I'm not at liberty to divulge what Dr. Edler's current employment status is --and technically--neither should any board member as it is inappropriate to do so. Someone should simply ask her though, as I'm told she goes to certain chat sites online and chimes in and I'm told she still works at the Hospital and or she could say publicly what her status is at Escambia County. I won't comment on he status though. I will say, however, I am happy about the new direction the EMS department is headed with this new UF contract for University-based medical direction with professional training and (finally) updated protocols. It will be like a breath of fresh air! :)
Here is what Underhill posted on ECW when someone came on one of his threads and asked about Edler's status:
Douglas Underhill:
well, it could be because you are clueless about how employment law works or about the Family and Medical leave Act. So you come on here attacking Dr. Edler, who is a whistleblower and the only one who had the courage to speak the truth about the corruption in EMS. Clearly, someone feeds you garbage to put out in social media, because you have never demonstrated a real understanding of how the law works.
Then someone else asked something like, "Oh? How does it work?" (first poster was probably blocked by the ECW admin).
So, he posted a link to the Department of Labor's page on the Family and Medical Leave Act.
Commissioner Bergosh, it’s so much worse than how you lay it out. Not only did she just blanket copy protocols from a private service, she discontinued protocols all together by the interim medical director who was imminently more qualified than her and were very professionally laid out. She made some serious changes to them probably resulting in some errors and then yanked them 8 months after they went live. New progressive training had been put in place also under the prior administration ( Dr Henning and then Dr Stavros). This training was designed to ensure measurement of and advancement of knowledge. A professional and well respected Paramedic trainer was hired to oversee it and trust me when I say it was well received. People tend to gloss over White having a well respected background in training (award winning) and R Brownfield extremely respected as an educator. They wanted EMS to have structured hands on training that was tied to something, not sit in a conference room with 100 people and listen for 4 hours. They also built service excellence training to implement quick reaction training to troubling trends or hot button issues. All that training was wiped out and then oh my gosh we need training from and outside source because we don’t have training. It was the tail wagging the dog. And they let her get away with it. I am truly concerned the county is spending 250k on medical direction. There is comparable sized EMS service paying that. It should have gone out on a simple contract and experienced full time trainers should have been hired to facilitate new hire and on-going training and quality assurance. PSD Gilmore and the EMS Chief are making good moves, but there inexperience on some of this is really painfully obvious. Don’t look now but there is another shoe to drop. There is a rumor that Edkers hand picked unqualified person was giving out bad cards. Under her watch. He didn’t file complaints so he just got quietly moved to the north end. That’s okay, the proper authorities know. Should watch those sworn statements I guess.
You need to stop having Eric Gilmore come up for every EMS or Fire issue. You have an EMS Chief and a Fire Chief and they need to be talking to you directly. They are the experts. Eric is slightly out of his depth on EMS. Did the county have medical direction for the last few weeks? According to him no, according to the BCC chair yes. Which is it? One is a quick way for a lot of people to get in serious trouble. An experienced person would have had some emergency plan when the medical director, let’s just say, becomes unavailable. A lot of the issues of the past would have not gotten so bad had your EMS and Fire Chiefs been able to address issues. Far to long Mr Weaver wanted only to prevent Jack Brown from being unhappy and make it those few more years. A lot of information that needed to go up was blocked and you guys continue to get caught off guard. Look, when Congress talks to their armed forces, they don’t just talk to the Secretary of Defense. If they have Navy questions they talk to the Chief of Naval Operations and Army questions get answered by the Chief of Staff of the Army. You may not always like what they have to tell you, not they want you tell them but from a policy perspective it is key. These divisions are larger than almost every department you have. Listen to the experts.
To anon 6:59, Sir or Mam you are dead on. I have lived that same frustration, under Jack Brown's lack of leadership, at the Division Commander level. These current Commissioners should really dive into your advice. I mean really take it in, if they want to solve issues that seem to be spiraling out of control. I'm talking about a paradigm change, not just a short term fix. Your post is well done and espouses strong content validity regarding the relevant issue of your post: contact with the board by the Department Director and their priorities for survival, and as a contrast, Division Commanders and their priorities for survival; lastly, there's the mission, which should take priority in a healthy non-toxic organization.
I didn't respond to this because I wanted to let other people have a chance to chime in without setting the tone, and I'm really glad to see that happened with people who really seem to know what's up underlining what the commission needs to know, and what they don't get told.
Just quickly in response to "why no media?" I think that Jim Little is on leave. Of course nobody else at the PNJ was going to step in. Why? Because in order to report on it, they'd have to put it out there that a whole lotta people making a whole lotta dime off the Escambia taxpayers but who were really in Downtown's stables were dead wrong on this issue. No fricking way the editorial team at the PNJ is going to request some straight reporting on Dr. Edler's tenure--and her justifiable replacement--as it would mean too many money bags and their water carriers, some of whom are tied up with hospital politics, having to eat crow and perhaps even answer some questions about what on earth they were up to CYAing Edler and gang above all else, even knowingly putting the BOCC in legal jeopardy to do it.
Who cares if innocent people are up on charges? It's always just the best of all possible worlds Downtown, with some fools admiring everything in an author of reputation.
Anon 6:51, can you say anything more about the person who filled the AHA role when the previous person was arrested and then (allegedly) was himself caught writing bad certificates? I had heard from multiple sources that this was widely known at the department, and that Edler and Maddrey had allowed him to bounce back down to a truck in the Northern County with zero disciplinary action--and no complaint to the DOH, of course. (Which there really shouldn't be to begin with for typical lax certification problems of this nature--there should be strong in-house discipline for this sort of thing. But in this context, from here on out everything of this nature should be going to all of the agencies that were passed cherrypicked crap from the County that targeted particular individuals, while letting Edler's "posse" to run amok.)
I did bring this certification redux issue up at my meeting with Mr. Williams at the State's Attorney's Office and Officer Kennedy of FDLE. I hope that the complaint is raised to the SAO in addition to DOH. That agency has been operating in a purely political fashion the last two years, and doesn't really have the capacity, it seems, to conduct proper investigations any more. So it needs to go to other agencies, as well, and I'd appreciate anything further you felt comfortable saying about it.
I left my interview with saying that I was going to turn over a bunch of public record to the SAO that it seemed as if they didn't even know existed (not surprising, if they were relying on previous administration and HR to provide it). I've been really hoping that somebody at the County would take point on communicating what *actually* happened with all of this to the SAO and FDLE, and have been trying to leave room for that to happen. The County really needs to come clean about this. But if nobody at the County is going to do that, then I'll proceed with turning in potentially exculpatory evidence, and complicating factors including lying witnesses--I already identified some--to Mr. Williams.
I know only from reliable sources. I also know there are some people who have perjured themselves to lied to law enforcement officer and with depositions ongoing who knows what happens next. There is still the fact that Edler filed knowingly false claims to the DOH regarding protocols. She signed and approved them after months of review, sent an email department wide announcing them and signed off on the training curriculum to make them go live. Then she threw it all on the wall hoping something would stick or do enough damage to prop herself as the queen who took down an honorable man and some his leadership team because they dared told her she had to respectable in the office. She probably only included extra stuff not knowing what any of them may have pulled out as their evidence. My understanding is that the formal Chief is very organized. Obviously one of them had some pretty good information for them to basically say after that the evidence was no good. These people won’t get their reputations back but the county owes them an apology. The charges were political and probably prosecutorial abuse in the sheer number of charges. I think if you have evidence it should be released right away.
1.
Anon 11:08, thank you so much for being willing to state those things, even anonymously. You are only saying, of course, what EVERYBODY in Public Safety knows--EMTs and Medics, dispatch, management, administration, those still there and those moved on. There are also PLENTY of people in the medical community at large in this town that know exactly what racket Edler was running with this--but somehow it was the people she set up who ended up with the RICO charges.
On that note, this SAO has been addicted to running with overblown conspiracy charges for a long time. So when you view it through a context of the prosecutorial history of some of the particular players, the charges are sadly par for the course. It's like candy for them. But the good news is that it is an acknowledged pattern among people familiar with the justice system here that they do that, so hopefully that understanding in the "biz" will assist in getting this unraveled.
And also, we can't know what all evidence they are proceeding from. Yes, we know people lied--I know many of who they were, and you will know even more--in various venues, including being under oath in their FDLE investigations. I gave some of the names I was knowledgeable about, but was not able to get in all of the people I am aware of, as I wasn't steering the conversation or the line of questions.
Just in general, I encouraged them to really have some very thorough conversations on every aspect of this scenario with Lindsay Ritter, Derek Elmer, Craig Ammons, Bill Hopkins, and Richie Fulton--at least start there. And that Shawn Hoopaugh might be particularly helpful, since he was willing to come clean on things through official record, even though Janice Gilley and Jana Still wouldn't allow him to do so. I did not provide any of the names of staff coerced into sexual relations with a superior, but am still hoping one or some of them might find the courage to come forward.
2.
What we don't know is what Edler, Pineapple, Hoopaugh, Lindsay, and Ammons--anybody I missed?--were up to in all those closed-door, hours long sessions in Edler's office after she dragged the AHA files in there and put them under lock and key. I have no idea whether they fabricated anything in those sessions, or destroyed files. I just know they were communally capable of that, and worse. And that not a single person in County leadership above Edler was willing to raise a public voice to this, even though they were WELL aware of their witch hunts; everybody had their own best interests to look out for.
To this day, in fact, not a single person--past or present--from chief/director level or above has gone to the press, or spoken at a meeting or in any public venue. While I am grateful that many have been willing to speak with me off the record, people need to not lose sight that the following leadership roles have not cleared the air publicly about their knowledge of the horrible conspiracy being enacted on innocent staff:
--2 past Administrators
--2 past Interim Administrators
--2 current Assistant Administrators
--2 Deputy Administrators (one of them now Interim Administrator)
--current Administrative Assistant
--past consultant paid 36K by the taxpayers and placed over Public Safety as the administrative head--never any official capacity, of course
--past consultant and previous Public Safety director paid to conduct an investigation on this and other matters and report it to the board (and failed to do so, only saying that Edler refused to speak with her)
--2 past Interim EMS Chiefs (one who became permanent Chief)
--2 past HR Directors
--5--FIVE--past and present Public Safety directors, interim or permanent (including the past Fire Chief)
--2 past Emergency Managers (both of whom became interim Public Safety directors)
--Multiple past and present area Medical Directors, from government and private sectors
Every. Single. Person. making up the above list knows *exactly* what was going on, and that Edler set these people up. And yet, there has not been *one* person in an official leadership capacity who was aware of what was happening, past or present, and went public with it to get it fixed, other than Commissioner Bergosh. He is the only person out of all of County leadership willing to do that.
This is why I really think it is of crucial importance for the County to stop its ridiculous and shameful CYAing on this topic, and come clean to FDLE and the SAO to make this right. I know that's probably a naive wish, and not one I will rest on too much longer. And remember, the irony is that a lot of the evidence is in public record!--that should have been given to the SAO by the County, or the SAO should have pursued it themselves.
This whole thing is so absolutely absurd--and the fact that it WORKED to get these people arrested--that it's no wonder nobody believed it. I mean, what does this say about the County--our community?--that something like this could have been allowed to happen, and get condoned by SO MANY government officials and agencies? How on earth can any of the people on that above list live with themselves not coming clean about it?
It's just a very bad time for the honesty and truth in this country. Not to mention courage and integrity. :( But this was such a bad, sloppy job, with so many people contributing to it, that the center isn't going to hold. It only takes one to start the flipping. With three very determined criminal attorneys willing to get that process going in depositions, no doubt.
7/30/2021 DOCKET DAY SET FOR 09/29/2021 AT 9:00 AM IN MC/ , JDG: NOBLES, LINDA L. - PER JA EMAIL
continued
from 8/4/2021 in one case, so far
clerk is slow to post images of documents on one of the other cases
mage Date Entry
7/23/2021 NOTICE OF TAKING DEPOSITIONS
Anon 2:35 what are you trying to say/show?
JB's case was set for 11/22 and I just looked up the case out of curiosity. I know the county is in the that false claims case but I find it weird they have try to depose the past medical director three times unsuccessfully from the address she left for the state. It is right there on record that they need her deposition but can't seem to be able to serve her
It is on record he is indigent and can't afford the depositions of the others who cases have resolved and the ASA on the case will not reach a negotiation with his attn.
What happened to right to a speedy trial? This is from March 2020.
He is up on RICO charges
" In order to satisfy this standard, the plaintiff must plead or allege the date, time and place of the alleged fraud or otherwise inject precision or some measure of substantiation into a fraud allegation. To set out a prima facie showing of a civil RICO violation under 18 U.S.C. § 1964(c), a plaintiff must have been injured by ‘racketeering activity"
They say they are trying to depose her for his DEFENSE.
Take a look at it.
It is just disturbing what he has had to go through, I think he is still under a gag order from what was first filed. A motion has been made to dismiss several counts.
Is the assistant state attn just trying to be unreasonable still..
You might need this in your defense of the false claim case.
Post a Comment