THE SPECTATOR: WASHINGTON COUNTY’S HELICOPTER AMBULANCE
Washington County’s recent decisions regarding its air ambulance service have been difficult to understand…and apparently just as hard for county officials to explain.
In just one month’s time, County Commissioners terminated the contract with their current air medical provider…hired a new provider…decided to employ all of the medical personnel who staff the helicopters…and decided to take on all of the expenses of the program. That’s a far cry from the program’s inception when we were told the helicopter ambulance would cost taxpayers little to nothing. Just last year the program lost over $131,000! EMS Director Kevin Deramus justifies the loss by saying that due to staffing shortages of their regular ground EMS crews, air EMS personnel had to assist with running the COVID Subhub and the Joint Information Center for months. Because that work was not tied to aviation hours, the County did not seek reimbursement from REACH, their air ambulance provider. Just last June Deramus called the staffing issue a “pretty significant crisis”. While employers in the private sector continue to struggle finding people to work, apparently Deramus and the County Commissioners think it’s a good time to add an entire new division of personnel to the EMS Department.
As for the potential annual cost of the program that the County is taking on, it’s hard to nail down. I can tell you that the County’s expenses last year were over $1.4 million dollars…and that was without the air EMS crews being County employees. Under the new contract, the County will pay the new provider, Metro Aviation, over $170,000 per month for the “provision, maintenance and operation of the aircraft”, plus a per hour flight time fee of $1200. That’s over $2 million if the helicopter never leaves the ground! The County has not said what staffing the helicopter with EMS personnel is expected to cost. But apparently taxpayers should not be worried. The County says it’s going to take over billing insurance companies and will be reimbursed for expenses, maybe to the point of turning a profit. Now that I will have to see to believe! I do know this for a fact. There’s nothing that government can do better than the private sector…except for one thing. Tax you.
Three weeks ago KWHI invited Deramus and County Judge John Durrenberger to come on air to explain the decision to change providers. They declined, saying they wanted to wait until they hired a new company. Well, now there are more questions for them to answer. But because taking over the entire air ambulance program is uncharted territory for the County, I’m afraid there aren’t any concrete answers…only hypotheticals. And that’s the way it looks to this Spectator.
There are counties all over TX that use EMS helicopters all the time. Just call one of many providers and they’ll be happy to assist. Its what they do.
There are also precious few counties in TX that have their own EMS helicopters with full SAR capabilities and all the trimmings. Like Travis County STARflight.
To review the obvious:
Washington County is not Travis County.
Your Wash Co EMS Director wants to do STARflight better than STARflight does STARflight, in Wash Co.
(You are here)
This is ridiculous. Just another terrible decision that the taxpayers of this county will have to cover. The entire county group should be fired!
The Spectator has made a very good analysis of this latest head-scratching move. With a number of area hospitals available in the Brenham area, easily reachable by ground ambulance, one wonders just how often the air ambulance will be used when a ground ambulance would do. Of course, two critical life-threatening transports via air could be billed as a “$Million Dollar Ambulance Ride”. And if it is MY carcass with a torn-off limb they are transporting, I could change my tune! It seems as if Joy Fuchs was the one level-headed analyzer who stepped up and said, “…now wait just a darn minute…”
As someone with a lot of pre-hospital and air-medical experience I see a lot of red flags here.
First, I do feel that it’s somewhat necessary to play the Devil’s Advocate here: Air medical programs can survive and in fact be profitable in small counties, even counties much smaller than Washington. Profitable in Washington County seems a little out of reach due to billing practices but the county isn’t trying to get rich with the program, they are trying to run a program to benefit the citizens (and the vanity of the EMS director).
Now, on to the fun part, Washington County has always rubber stamped the EMS director’s plans. Staffing in Washington County is at an atrocious level because rather than paying attention and working to keep ground EMS crews happy, Director Deramus plays in his “Special Operations” fantasy land. There’s no place at Washington County for Paramedics that want to just be good/great Paramedics. If they aren’t tactical, boat, or helicopter saavy, they aren’t a fit in the culture. To whatever end that this helicopter brings, they are using this to build a brand, nothing more. If they weren’t so concerned with their name sprayed all over the thing, they’d be using Memorial Hermann, PHI, or Air Evac. Hell, when their own helicopter was down, they refused to call the other companies, even when one was based at their quarters to cover. That IN AND OF ITSELF should dictate to you that this is a want, not a necessity.
The level of arrogance that the Commissioner’s and Director Deramus carry around in thinking that they can literally do anything better than people who run multi-million dollar businesses dedicated towards is astounding. My hope is solely that this venture in vanity doesn’t get good public servants or their patients killed. You can only push the safety regulations so far, so many times before fate catches you. Their refusal to talk on record, publicly, prior to hiring the new company tells you every thing you need to know about the County Judge and EMS director. Quite frankly, they don’t care about their electorate’s opinions and would rather ask for forgiveness than permission.
Hold your elected officials accountable, that goes further than ranting on Facebook and KWHI. Drive yourself to the election office and hire new officials…
While it’s great to have a local air ambulance and I’ll be glad it’s there if I ever need it, it’s extremely costly and I question whether it’s something the taxpayers of Washington County can afford considering the size of our county. I’ve questioned the cost of it ever since it started and felt it was very unusual for a county our size to have a service that I know is VERY costly.
I don’t oppose having an air ambulance, but we can’t ignore the cost … EVER. If we can afford this service, then I’m all for it. If we can’t afford it, then we must realize it’s part of the risk we take living in a rural area. If county officials (elected or otherwise) can’t explain it, then it’s going off the rails or already has. I’m sure it’ll all be blamed on the pandemic like everything else is these days.
Many, not all, public employees and elected officials take actions to pad their resumes and massage their own egos. The cost of the programs they advocate always gets lost in the big PR push to sell it to the citizens. They push a program that fails or has “unexpected cost overruns” and then go about their merry way without any real consequences. The officials then retire or move on to another job. It’s an old story that’s been repeated many times in local, state and federal governments.
Remember, the county pays for nothing that the taxpayers don’t fund with tax dollars. You think your taxes are high now … you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The cost of this will spiral out of control. Actually, it already is.
horrible. maybe it should have been owned privately. but that would have never happened. my taxes went up by a huge margin last year. i dread the next tax bill.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about saving lives. I’ve worked closely with this service for years.
However, This is getting out of hand. If you’re short on ground crews, it doesn’t make sense to add more personal to another division at all! Ever! This is obvious gross mismanagement! There needs to be accountability!
A lot of things were promised and it’s been one mistake after another and excuse after excuse is allowed to be made by commissioners and especially EMS! This including hiring some one early on to run the helicopter program that was a bad seed at the previous service he worked for and turned out to be the same bad seed here and probably under a contract that we taxpayers had to buy out or pay out. They decided to build a hanger in Old Washington which make absolutely no sense to “Washington County” tax payers that live on the west end of the county! Oh wait, maybe there’s a future plan for a second helicopter on the west side $$$$$$!
There seems to be a lot of “pushing the issue/service” by EMS leadership and it seems the commission’s court is eating out of EMS’s hand and gives them what they want. Seems EMS keeps “Putting the cart before the horse” and then asking for the best expensive horse to pull the cart. Anyone that owns a horse knows there’s a lot of additional expenses, just like a helicopter! Which seems to be out of service for maintenance a lot! Bottom line, Seems we bought ourselves an expensive lame horse!
To continue with this mismanaged service would be insane.
It’s obvious on what needs to happen here, get rid of the service or get rid of those mismanaging it. Or probably both. Ultimately it all rest on the EMS director. He’s the one that asked commissioners for this “lame horse” and somehow convinced them it was a great idea! It can’t even help put out fires….
Here’s another money pit EMS proposed. A new station at Lake Somerville with a boat! (Inset previous analogy of the expensive horse here too.) The Chappell Hill station sits empty most of the time because of call volume in the city of Brenham and they’re going to add a station to accommodate a BOAT! That’s a lot of expense for so little calls.
It’s time to re-evaluate EMS spending and priorities. It’s time to question the frivolous spending and refocus on a more cost effective way to improve services for the residents.
Helicopters and boats are not cost effective for our “Small Town” area. “Small Town” is a quote commissioners used to shut down the fire department ESD development. Meanwhile, we’re buying helicopters and a boat for EMS. Seems like something a big city does. Hypocrisy at it’s best.
can you imagine the bills the poor, unsuspecting uses of this “air ambulance” system are going to incur when their insurance refuses to pay, or they don’t have insurance? Or is the “ambulance” service going to check with the insurance provider to see if the victim is covered before accepting them? Any time I see a government agency saying that they hope to turn a profit off of peoples misfortunes, it raises a red flag for me!
Thank you for defending the taxpayers of the county. We pay with our sales taxes and property taxes, and both of those hit the low income people very hard, especially fixed income seniors. Inflation and rising rents are taking their toll, as we have a poverty rate in the city of over 25%. And that group cannot afford the insurance which would pay for this expensive service. And there are no longer Medicaid dollars to use.
We depend on you, the free press to help us, the ordinary workers, the old and infirm, and we thank you for taking that responsibility. If only the single minded elected leadership of the county understood this same primary responsibility. When government officials bend to the desires of an influential few, the majority pay the price. There is only one way to change this ever growing dilemma.
You nailed it Tom without saying it point blankly like I’m about to… it’s all about the money, tax the citizens more, the elected officials have way too much control of the tax revenue, they need to be audited, they need to be held accountable, and we the tax payers should have more say so as to where the money is being allocated. All this behind the Scenes deal making needs to be questioned more. Heck, I’m still ticked off about the deal made behind the scenes with the trash. Excuse the pun here but, our town like trashy with all these trash receptacles sitting out waiting to be picked up and taken off the curbs. I like the old way much better. And I guarantee if you conducted a poll, the majority of the Brenhamites would tell you the same. But hey, we didn’t get a say so in that either. Our elected officials just made that decision to allocate the tax money in the direction of a private business without putting it out to bid or asking us and no one questions it.
Never should have been built or started the deal. I should have had the helicopter pad at the Ems station on the the loop then you wouldn’t need extra workers. Depends on the call they take what the need. Somebody need to be fired for wasting money for the county that was supposed to cost nothing