The Brownsville Fire Department has been assessed around $1 million in penalties by the Texas Department of Public Health's Emergency Medical Services inspection section for its failure to maintain an acceptable medicine protocol in its EMS mobile units.
These are the medicines that are critical for the treatment and stabilization of patients the units pick up.
The original citation by TDPH was nearly $2.5 million, but negotiations between the city administration and the department resulted in a negotiated settlement of nearly half that.
The problem stemmed from a TDHS audit that showed that five medicines that should always be carried in the EMS units at all times to provide first aid to patients were missing from the units. In a follow-up audit, the auditors found that the medicine protocol was still not being followed by the city's EMS units.Sources say that the auditors first notified the city that they were assessing a $7,500 fine per day from January 1 to the middle of last week, around Sept. 25, around 269 days.
At $7,500 a pop, that would amount to more than $2 million in fines.
However, the city negotiated with the TDHS contending that current Fire Chief Carlos Elizondo was not responsible for the performance of past fire chief Lenny Perez who was in charge of the department at the beginning of 2016. The state auditors relented and only fined the city for the 136 days after May 15 when Elizondo was appointed chief.
Those 136 days at $7,500 a day total $1,020,000 in fines that the city has to pay.
This is going to put the city in a quandary since Elizondo is under pressure to reduce the $1.5 million that the department spends yearly on overtime pay for its firefighters/EMTs.
In the new contract, the city will not have to pay firefighters on parity with the police department or other city employees. They also don;t have to abide by minimum staffing agreements with the union and lower overtime payments.
Former chief Perez had allowed for EMS charges to patients to accumulate and did not press for collections of that debt. However, with the city hoping to establish a new fire and police academy site on the abandoned Casa del Nylon building it purchased for $2.3 million, those collections have taken on a critical importance.
However, with the new $1 million hit in fines against the department, it is likely that city residents will now see emergency "transfers" from PUB to offset the fines or the fire department will see further cutbacks on firefighters' overtime pay and a cutback in services.
How was it that the fire department chief and the administration overlook the looming penalties from its failures to adhere to the medicine protocols?
The city administration seems to be more preoccupied with staging self-congratulatory PSAs to paste on to the city channel to make itself look good while Elizondo seems to be stretched too thinly between being a trustee of the Brownsville Independent School District and fire chief to keep his eye on the department's business.
Either way, it's the residents who will end up pay for these shortcomings in the city and fire department administration.
8 comments:
El Culo, Unido, Nunca Sera Vencido.
Our lives are at stake here people. Brownsville taxpayers always pay for preventable mistakes made by the COB. Stop with this compadrismo shit and hire true professionals.
Hey, no one is in charge of the Brownsville Fire Department! That is the reason for the fines. If anyone gets the blame or "takes a hit" it will be some little guy, not a manager. In Brownsville "shit" doesn't float, it rolls downhill.
Nothing, absolutely nothing is done correctly in this piss hole called Browntown. It is full of the uneducated, under educated and just plain stupid people. There is no reason to think the EMS people are anything but standard low grade Browntown people.
The bright spot is you can still get some fine Tex-Mex grub here.
Charlie Cabler is to blame for this and commission the level of care for citizens was diminished now they want to lower the minimum staffing for a city this size.there are studies to show that Brownsvilles fire protection and Ambulance service is not adequate and it's been like that for over ten years.Based on a study from the national fire protection service and the national insurance boards a city this size in population and square miles should have the minimum of 15 Ambulance units and the COB HAS 7. I hope citizens are aware now the lack of importance the city puts on this critical function they cannot play dumb they have known about it for years starting with Cabler and the commission its going to be a sad day when your mom dad ,grandma ,family needs a ambulance and they are all busy to transport you to the hospital.People need to start hitting them phones and call your commissioners and Cabler office and express to them this disgrace.
Who cares about the fine, the real issue her is that life saving medication has not been available on Brownsville ambulances. Did people die because of this? Did people suffer quality of life issues due to lack of timely medications? This is very scary. If the issue for you is the expense of the fine then you must be totally freaked about the possibility of lawsuits from people who may have received inadequate emergency medical attention due to the absence of these medications. Years ago I did a ride along with Austin EMS. At every shift change the incoming shift would start every piece of mechanical equipment to make sure it worked. This included things like generators and the like. Not long after I was in Brownsville and came upon I car crash with a victim trapped inside one of the cars. EMS intended to use the "jaws of life" to extract the trapped individual but they could not start the generator that supplied power to the "jaws". One guy stood there holding the tool while two other guys took turns pulling on the generator cord. They finally gave up and went to Plan B. I thought those days were over. I guess they are still with us. Is anyone going to be held accountable?
Look the State of Texas prohibits publically funded entities from collective bargaining, just shit can all of the brass in the FD and hire new professionals..
Chief Perez retired on Oct 2015.
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