Finger Lakes Regional EMS Council
July 26, 2010
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Call to order. Before we do roll call I'd like to introduce two new members, Karen Haas. Hello. And Dr. Robert Biernbaum. Can we have the roll call, please? Ontario County. Ken Beers. Kevin Esparza. Everett Ferguson. Here. Ken Kelly. Brian Mace. He's out in the hallway. No, he's here. Oh, is he, all right. Mike Moss. Excused. Excused. Terry Phillips. He's out in the hallway coming down the hall. Matt Sproul. Here. John Van Auker. Excused. I have Debbie Trickey, coordinator. Seneca County. Karen Haas. Yep. Chris Leven. Excused. I have a Charles McCann, coordinator. Wayne County. Bill Comella. Here. Laurie Crane. Here. Jackie Dishaw. Here. Diane Gary. Excused. Ella Guthrie. Excused. Gloria Lance. Excused. Griff Mangan. Excused. Bill Liddle. I think I'm here. Yates County. Mike Healy. Here. Sande Johnson. Here. James Reed. Here. Ed Wedge. Here. Chris Warriner. Here. Cheryl Alting, I'm here. Dr. Robert Biernbaum. Actually I'm Wayne County. You are Wayne County. You're at-large actually. (________) Okay. Minutes. Every body receive a copy of the minutes. Mr. Chairman, may I ask if _____ last minutes, reading the minutes, very few people identified themselves so I don't know who's making motions or who is asking questions so if we could identify ourselves when we speak, that would be very helpful. Every read it? I'll approve the minutes. And you are? Ed Wedge. (_________) seconded, sir. Any discussion? All those in favor? (Ayes) Those not in favor say nay? Any abstentions? Carried. Committee reports. Treasurer? Everyone has received the treasurer's report in their packet _____ information that is there. (_____________) Mike Healy, a motion to approve. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye? (Ayes) Those not in favor say nay? Any abstentions? Carried. Training and Education. The report was mailed out. If anybody has any questions for Training and Ed. Mr. Kelly is not here. I do have to ask those that are Training and Ed if they would stay after the meeting we have a couple of courses that need to have approval. Mr. Chairman, Everett Ferguson, from Ontario County, I move that we accept the Training and Ed report. Mike Healy, second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye? (Ayes) All those not in favor say nay? Any abstentions? Approved. Executive Report. Anything we kind of went over during executive will come under unfinished business which is the policy that we have up front if anybody needs a copy of it for reimbursement for CONs. Public Relations? We bring two -- Cheryl Alting, we, Donna, Bill Liddle and I attended the health fair at the Newark-Wayne Hospital. Any questions for Cheryl? REMAC. Dr. Davidoff, the report that is in your packet, I'll try and answer any questions that you might have. Mike Healy, a motion to approve. (__________) Second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye? (Ayes) All those not in favor say nay? Any abstentions? State EMS Council. I left the packet up here on the table if anybody didn't get one. (_________) Does anybody need a copy of that? Just a reminder that we will not meeting at the State level until October again so we don't have a lot of time to get all of this _________. Yes, Mr. Ferguson. Everett Ferguson, Ontario County. I have one question on your ____ it says that there's ____ a low number of nominations for State awards. State. The committee suggested recruiting _______ high schools. Those are two separate items. (__________) At the time of the meeting they had very few nominating awards and since that cut-off date __________ that was specifically stating and then the other thing that the committee talked about was possibly recruiting from high schools. (___________) And also remember that they must _____ minimum age by the month that they're testing. So if they're in high school and they take the course that ends in June, and your birthday is in July, they can't test. ___________ There are a number of places where they are conducting EMT classes in high school ___________. Donna Spink, Finger Lakes Community College. Ross, Karen Megenhoffen, talked to Training and Ed meeting when we were there in Albany. There are a couple of ways that some areas have kind of have, I don't want to say skirted because I don't mean that, but if a student is a high school student and they don't turn 18 until July or August they've taken the spring semester or whatever you can to call it of that year, she said quite often people will turn in two different schedules, one where so many will test in June, the normal date, and then a separate test date with the same schedule testing in August so that these kids can do their classroom activity and their clinical and that, but they are not actually scheduled and it's a separate course number that would actually test in August, and I think, I could be mistaken, but I think Paul Bishop alluded to the fact they do the same thing at MCC, and I was not aware that we could do that so. Ross Zastrow, State EMS. I don't think it's wrong. That's the first I'm hearing that, but I'm that sure Karen Megenhoffen thought it was something that was viable. I would think that _______ schools, summer school schedules __________ school year. I don't see a problem with it _________. There are some very successful high school problems __________ had one for years and it's very successful. Monroe County has been doing it over at BOCES. Niagara County had a BOCES program _____ started several years and I believe that it is still running __________ option. It's kind of a - for the lack of a better term, a nontraditional type schedule ______ an hour at a time over a very long period of time. It's very difficult to do and do right. But the right instructor, and it's been proven to work. ______ as well. I know BOCES - Finger Lakes BOCES contacted us a couple of different times and one of the issues, well, several issues, but one of the issues _______ a person has to be 18 and that can cause a problem if they're not going to be 18, I was going by the June test date. Right. They actually wanted us to test in May so that the kids would have that last three weeks in order to get ready for their actual graduation, taken their actual course and that, and I said to them, you're really out of the realm if they're not 18 by May that's almost an impossibility. The other issue was that the students don't belong to agencies, you know, where do we get our funding. Right. And they didn't want to pay for it either and it's like, well, then if they belong to agencies that's okay. The other concern we had was how do they get back and forth to their clinicals, can they drive or will their parents be able to take them, you know, different things like that so it kind of - we've pursued it a couple of different times and it's kind of petered out when it starts getting to the particulars. (____________) And lastly, do we have an instructor that's, I think, those that have retired from teaching younger students. (____________) That would be the other issue, yes, we need to get somebody to go - whether you do it an hour at a time or you do it as an after school event or whatever for a couple of hours or whatever and that comes into play as well. (____________) (___________) I believe that one of the other issues that we've talked about _______ teacher or their Department of Health certificate ____________. That's probably a question better asked of the school _____ I know ___ situation __________certified teacher, part of the staff in their high school. BOCES I think has some ________ so that may be - But when I talked to BOCES, they wanted their LPN instructor to teach the class, and I was like no. (________________) But we have pursued it on several - as I say, things come in and then it's kind of like where do we go. (________________) But we did a senior high school for belonged to Penn Yan Ambulance Corps a couple of three years ago where we started it one night a week. We did it one night a week and they started in January and tested in August so that it hit all of their birthdays. The only thing that we found in that was and several of them were very bright kids were the fact that we felt that the scores were probably about five points lower and we felt that it probably was because of the span of the class and we had a very good success rate with it. They passed, but I think their scores will a bit lower than we expected they were going to be for high school students. Yes, and that maybe ____________ versus the in-school type setting _____ five days a week. We've tried that to alter a schedule to try to catch everybody, I guess I didn't realize until she was talking about it that some of them put in two different course numbers and then they just end up taking the exam later - (____________ I never even thought about that. (_______________) Any other questions for State EMS Council? Legislative Review? Nothing _____. Everett Ferguson from Ontario County. Legislative Review ____ nothing at this time, Mr. Chairman. Program Coordinator's report. Bob Stueber, Program Agency Coordinator. My report was in your packet. And I'll entertain any questions. Yes. Dr. Biernbaum. (________________) shouldn't it be reported _________ was it reported to the REMAC this past time? No, it wasn't. So one of my concerns is ________ we're not meeting the needs of _____ Wayne County _____ quality assurance program for _____________ agencies in Wayne County who don't have ___ numbers. Nobody asked to put anything on the agenda for the meeting. We schedule the meeting and we leave it up to the docs to bring any pending issues forward and none of the docs brought any issues forward. None of the agencies brought any issues forward. One of my concerns regarding ___ quality assurance is that one _________ region ________ are actually meeting qualifications ________ actually have true quality committees because most _____ don't have enough members. ____________ their quality committee. (____________) what it says is that every ambulance service, advanced life support, first response service can establish or participate so I would think that as long as those agencies are submitting forms for review are aware of the proceedings in that committee and are in some way, shape or form actively participate in _________ it would seem to be that would satisfy it, but perhaps if you're concerned that the Wayne County agencies are not adequately involved, you need to advertise it more. I believe back about a year ago Ross and I generated a letter together that said that basically the QA process was meant to be an agency process and for any agency issues before they came to the Council, but they were to be addressed at the agency level and if they felt that the outcome wasn't fair and equitable or they needed assistance to bring it to the Regional Council and the QA Committee of the Regional Council. We did send a letter out to all the agencies over a year ago now because that's when we reformed the committee and started to address reforming the committee because it was right after we had had several significant issues that needed to be addressed or about the time the issues needed to be addressed. I think the problem is that many of the agencies aren't doing any QA and that this _______ committee - The State level, don't take this the wrong way, but the State - that was a deliverable from our office says that I'm to deliver the PCRs and in fact I was recently told at a Program Agency Coordinators meeting, look at them, pass them through. So my office doesn't have the time to sit down and read every PCR that's coming through the office and I can tell you over a six month period just in the BLS agencies there were 4,000 PCRs that passed across my desk because that's what I'm doing for the __ study right now. Dr. Biernbaum. You know, actually I'm not sure that's what this is what this trying to get across, this is trying to get across that each agency whether it's at the local agency level - or actually it's pretty clear, I've heard ____ hospital level that need tons of involvement has a way to bring about concerning cases, and you know one of the things _________ because this hasn't gone on in Wayne County _______ the second one is tomorrow night. ________ were unable to do this. At the meeting we tried to basically follow the guidelines, physicians, nurses, medics, certainly the people who are involved in the care of those particular patients _______ REMAC. I wasn't aware that there was a committee report made _________ It's posted right at the top of the agenda. And it sounds like that there's not a lot going on. (__________) We had several significant issues which Dr. Syrett brought to us. We addressed those issues and we kept the meeting going just so that everybody if they know that there's going to be an issue they show up or they call me and say, hey, put this on the agenda for that meeting. Ross. Ross Zastrow, State EMS. The simple answer to ____ Dr. Biernbaum __________ that was done that way because _________ the Bureau went on the record as being opposed to that specific part _____ because of the difficulty for an individual agency to have their own - each agency have their own committee ______________. That was one of the discussions that we had several months ago back at REMAC __________ was established ________ county committees that were there saw something that they felt elevated to the next level ____________. Dr. Syrett was part of that committee. (___________) In working in conjunction with your meeting, if you've got some issue that comes out of the meeting tomorrow night, we would expect to be hearing about it at REMAC. If fact, hearing about it before REMAC. (__________) Dr. Biernbaum. I notice that you guys are working ______ protocol compliance. One of the questions I have after reading it, first of all I think it's great, what are we going to do with the data, are you going - It's going to come to the REMAC in the September meeting. ________ education of that, or ideas. Actually, believe it or not, I finished the numbers today and the actual numbers, oxygen application was like 97%. The only areas that I'm going to be a little concerned about now and addressing in the focus study is would be splinting and immobilization. There weren't as many as I thought that there would be, but that's, you know, you're looking at it after the fact, and you know, with the new State C-spine clearance, you would expect the numbers in that area to be lower. Any other questions for Program Coordinator? (___________) second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. (Ayes) All those not in favor say nay. Any abstentions? All right. FLCC Director's report. That was included in the packet. I'll entertain any questions. _______ Yates, motion to approve. Brian Mace, Ontario County, second. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. (Ayes) All of those not in favor say nay. Any abstentions? Nominating Committee. (____________) I want to remind you that the annual meeting is in September ____ electing officers, if you have an interest in any of the positions, please ________. Mr. Ferguson. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to ask the Nominating Committee - Everett Ferguson from Ontario, I'd like to ask the Nominating Committee _________ that this term base, the '09s are they ________? (___________) So we are electing the '10s? Yes. Did everybody hear that? On your Membership Committee assignment sheet everybody that has a '10 I believe is up for re-election this year - And the '09 should be '13. '09 should be '13 I believe. Yes. All right. Any other questions for Nominating Committee? I'm down to Unfinished Business. We do have some unfinished business. Did everybody receive a copy of the policy to outline the procedures and payments for certificates of need? Does anybody need a copy? Do you need a copy? Yes. Laurie Crane, Wayne County. Is this a policy that we already have establish or is this a new policy? Update. An update. _____________ Donna Spink. The change to this is actually under Article XXX we have to address the standards every year, once a year, and approve to either stick with what we've got or do whatever changes we're going to do. The changes to this are, in the past we have had just a standard amount of money for a deposit up front for any certificate of need. We never addressed the fact that if it went over that amount of the deposit how we were going to receive that money so that's basically what _________ state how we, if it went over that, because we're hearing from some folks across the State that they were running into thousands of dollars for a CON, especially if it's being challenged and going through the State and such so attorneys' fees and everything got quite expensive so we ____ decided we needed to talk ___. Thank you. Everett Ferguson, Ontario County. Just to supplement this __________ reviewed by the Executive Committee meeting _________ Any questions? Mr. Chair, Everett Ferguson, ______ accept the policies circulated for the __________ Mike Healy, Yates, second. Okay, open for discussion. Mr. Chair. Yes. Ed Wedge, Yates County. I've been reading the minutes from the last meeting. There has been significant discussion on this _________ (_________________) Just to clarify _____ the last time. The issue was going through the books, looking at the expenditures that the Council had __________ (____________) Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye? (Ayes) All those not in favor say nay? Nay. Any abstentions? Any other unfinished business? Once, twice, going down to New Business. Donna. Donna Spink. I have one new thing ___. The Ontario County Emergency Management Office has submitted their renewal for their sponsorship up to and including basic EMT and refresher. This was given to us after the May meeting. It was due July 1st, 2010 to the State. It was sent. This is our copy. Council has to vote whether approved for or against, and we go from there. In case everyone does not know the Ontario County has a sponsorship and we've had one for many years. Currently all they do right now and have done for many years is the certified policy academy for new recruitments, they do the certified first responder during that program and that's it and they seek no funding. They just - Bill Liddle, Wayne County, I move that we accept their application. Brian Mace, second. Discussion. Everett Ferguson, Ontario County. ____________ Any other discussion? Who teaches that? Steve _______. And then before we move forward I have to know if we are approving without reservation, with recommendation, with contingencies or not recommending so your motion has to have one of those. Bill Liddle, Wayne County, I amend my motion to read without reservations. Second. Motion to approve without reservation. Second without reservations. Any other discussion? All those in favor say aye (Ayes) All those not in favor say nay. Any abstentions? Okay, so moved. Any other new business? One more thing. Go ahead. Just to let you know that we are working on the audit, and it will be completed and Ross is coming for the audit on August 5th, I think it's the 5th. It's engrained in my mind because I wake up every night in the middle of the night hoping ________. Also, the other thing to let you know is Bill Liddle is our regional faculty and we are trying something new this year. He and I checked with Karen Megenhoffen and Ross actually reviewed it a little while ago, this has to have Training and Ed's recommendation, but we always do a certified lab instructor and certified instructor update every fall and we're going to try something new this year, where it's going to be half on line and half classroom attendance so we are coming up a little bit to the future with some on-line ____ and there are certain on-line courses that they have to do to get certificates and they have to bring them to us and then do the actual didactic portion in the classroom and then we submit their names to the State that they've done their update. But this is going to be something new so if you have grumblings out there about it that it didn't work or whatever or that people, that the dates weren't convenient for them, we tried. Any other new business before we move onto the State's naughty list? All right. Merle Shelley, Jr., PO Box 14, Richburg, New York for violation of 10 NYCRR part 800.16(c) and part 800.16(d), placed on probation for three years, effective 03/18/2010, civil penalty of $2,000. Louis Zacchio, 4 Orchard Place, Harrison, New York for violations of 10 NYCRR part 800.15(d), 800.16(c) and 800.16 (b), suspended for 30 days, run concurrently as respondent's regional ALS credentialing imposed by Westchester Regional EMS Council has already taken place. Thomas Malley, 60 Diamond Street, Little Falls, New York for violation of 10 NYCRR part 800.16(b), suspended for one year effective 04/19/2010 to 04/19/2011. Julius Franquet, Jr., 284 Barroga Street, Buffalo, NY, for violations of 10 NYCRR part 800.15(b), 800.16(a) and 800.16(b), revoked effective 05/07/2010. (_____________) Onto the next one, James Fletcher, Jr. 2480 Lynette Court, York Town, New York for violation of 10 NYCRR part 800.16(d), suspended for three years beginning 06/15/2010 ______ first 90 days of suspension, actual suspension 06/15/2010 to 09/15/2010, placed on probation for three years effective 06/15/2010, assessed a civil penalty of $2,000. Joseph Garone, Jr. 709 Hertzel Boulevard, West Babylon, New York for violation of 10 NYCRR part 800.16(b) and 800.16(d), revoked effective 05/20/2010. That is it for that list. Do I have a motion? I make a motion. Brian Mace, Ontario County, I make a motion we adjourn. Mike Healy, Yates, second. All right. Discussion? All those in favor say aye. (ayes) All those not in favor say nay. Any abstentions? Thank you everybody for coming.