State Agrees to Drop Complaint, $700k Fine if Fla. Agency Improves EMS Alerts
April 24--The Florida Department of Health has offered to drop its complaint against Collier County EMS officials and paramedics who were six minutes late to a fatal 2012 heart attack. The health department will not fine the county more than $700,000 if commissioners agree to spend $231,493 on alarm and emergency alert upgrades for its ambulance crews.
The settlement, which commissioners will consider Tuesday, would end an investigation into the county's ambulance crew that has stretched on for more than a year without much, if any, punishment.
"It's like a license to kill," said Charles Minard who found his 25-year-old son, Chaz, struggling to breathe on a December morning in 2012. "The upgrades should have been made without question. The $231,000-and-change should have been spent without question -- without being asked. Someone died. But now the county is getting a pat on the back, saying, 'Let's don't talk about it no more, because we'll throw a few bucks out there for some LED lights.'"
The health department's medical oversight bureau determined in December that, for unknown reasons, an ambulance crew "negligently failed to respond" to an emergency alarm when it was late to the scene of Chaz Minard's heart attack.
A second alarm had to be sent out. By the time the ambulance arrived, Golden Gate fire paramedics and a Collier County sheriff's deputy were at the Golden Gate Estates home performing CPR and attempting to restart Chaz Minard's heart, which was flatlining. Minard was taken to Physicians Regional Hospital where, six days later, doctors said his brain had been deprived of oxygen for too long and he would never wake up. The family decided to take him off life support.
State investigators also found county officials violated state law by failing to report the delay to authorities and sought to fine the county more than $700,000.
Commissioners and county attorneys denied the crew had done anything wrong, arguing instead that the paramedics' radio, pager and cellphone alerts all "somehow failed" at the same time, according to a memo from County Attorney Jeff Klatzkow. The county's own internal investigation, conducted in 2013, never found out why paramedics didn't hear the first emergency call. The crew was vacuuming the station and might not have heard it come in, or another radio channel could have blocked out the dispatch, county officials said.
Commissioners voted unanimously in January to challenge the fine and the state's findings before an administrative law judge. That hearing has not yet been scheduled.
The $231,493 in alarm system upgrades were already a part of plans by county officials, Klatzkow said in a memo to commissioners. The settlement agreement only speeds up the time line, he said. The county would need to install the new alarms, amps, speakers, wiring, night vision LED lighting and strobe lights within a year.
"The public would be far better served with the county's upgrading its existing locution systems rather than spending this money on litigation costs and potential fines," Klatzkow wrote.
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