The cost of ambulance service is on the rise, the fire union claims.
EDISON -- The chest pains started not long after firefighter Joe Dipple arrived at the scene. Laden with gear, fully exerted as he walked past the burning home, he suddenly couldn't carry a ladder through the 10 inches of snow on that afternoon in February 2014.
Sit down, another firefighter told him. You're going into an ambulance.
Even though Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital was closer to the south Edison home, the first-responders took him to JFK Medical Center.
When he got there, his union reps say, he received substandard medical care and an unwanted cashectomy. And now, with a $2,600 medical bill for an ambulance ride that the town still hasn't paid, he is worried about his credit, and wondering whether the town will ever take care of it.
"I get the bills every month. I send them to my union. The union sends them to the town," Dipple said in August. "I've never had any problems like this before."
Dipple's case is just one stark example of what the fire union sees as JFK Hospital's growing influence and worrisome impunity in Edison township. The union president, Robert Yackel, said that the problems are made worse by the fact that the mayor, Thomas Lankey, is also a top official at the hospital. Yackel recently filed ethics charges accusing the mayor of self-dealing, just a few years after the town outsourced EMS services to the private hospital.
The situation is causing delayed response times and sticker shock for people who take ambulance rides, the union says: The $500 or $600 the town used to passively charge patients' insurance companies has become $1,500 or $2,500 from JFK, with monthly reminders about outstanding bills. And firefighters, who are CPR certified, are not being called to the scenes of incidents even if they're around the corner, in deference to JFK, Yackel said.
In a statement, JFK said it had helped improve response times and saved the town money.
"JFK's sole focus is to continue providing Edison the highest quality EMS services including significantly improved response times to patients in an emergency situation," spokesman Steven Weiss said in an email. "We are pleased to have helped the Township of Edison eliminate major expenses for EMS services."
A central issue is certain ambulance transports that used to be the job of Edison firefighters. In the past, firefighters were paid a stipend to do the transports in town-owned vehicles, and they put $1 million back into the town every year when they billed insurance companies, the union says. But in 2011, the contract was outsourced to JFK, which pays the town $200,000 annually -- and bills patients $1 million a month, Yackel claims.
The fire department would passively bill customers, meaning they'd collect whatever an insurance company was willing to pay and forgive the rest, Yackel said.
Lankey's administration said in a statement that the JFK contract was subject to competition from other ambulance providers. The deal predates his election as mayor; when he was a councilman, he abstained from voting on JFK-related matters. Lankey is the senior vice president for long-term care at JFK.
The switch to JFK has backfired in one major respect. The town was seeking to save money by not having to pay transport stipends to firefighters. But an appeals court ruled last week that the town had to pay $1.2 million for the transports that the town took away from the firefighters, because whether or not the work was guaranteed in the contract, the payments were.
"What this town needs, they need someone to come in here and look at the delivery of the EMS system," Yackel said. "They have screwed this up something terrible."
Nearby Woodbridge has town-supported first-aid squads that do medical transports, and they also passively bill, meaning that they don't send collections letters and take what an insurance company will offer, according to a township spokesman.
The union president says that even after the firefighters supported Lankey's election, they're not going to take it anymore.
"I got sick and tired of being jerked around all the time," Yackel said.
Going nuclear, burning the bridge, fanning the flames -- pick your fire-related metaphor. The union has filed an ethics complaint against Lankey with the state, just as the union is in negotiations on its contract with the town.
Lankey has "taken advantage of his official state position and public trust to benefit a private organization for which he is affiliated, all to the detriment of the township's residents," Yackel wrote in a letter seeking a state investigation.
Last year, the town's ethics board found that Lankey violated state regulations when he used the township attorney to fight a traffic ticket.
"The mayor, a senior vice president, should not be doing business with the place he works for," Yackel said. "It's self-serving. Everything is JFK, JFK."
William Northgrave, the township attorney, said the ethics complaint hadn't yet been delivered to Lankey.
"Mayor Lankey respects any person's right to ask for a review of the actions of elected officials as set forth in state law," Northgrave said. "The Mayor would address any issues or concerns in the appropriate forum once they are brought to his attention."
Robert Diehl, the council president in Edison, said several seniors spoke up at a recent meeting about the suddenly higher cost of ambulance service (the town's business administrator, Maureen Ruane, said nobody in the mayor's office has received a complaint about ambulance service costs).
"They're being billed, and even though they're saying we don't necessarily chase you for that money, they still end up with a bill," Diehl said. "They don't like that."
Diehl said he's also heard complaints that JFK ambulances will take them to JFK, even when Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital is closer.
That was Dipple's experience. JFK was about five miles away from the fire scene; Robert Wood Johnson, in New Brunswick, was three.
Dipple is on the mend, finally, but it took some straightening out. The JFK doctors told him he was having a lung issue, and told him to see his general practitioner, Dipple said. But it wasn't a lung issue. A month later, he went to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, and found out he had to have surgery to repair a valve in his heart.
He most recently received a bill for ambulance services in August. (In a statement, the town said that cases like these are rare, and have been rectified.)
JFK declined to talk about Dipple's case.
In May, Dipple went before an arbitrator, he said.
"They said, why aren't these bills paid?" Dipple said. "Pay the man's bills."
Brian Amaral may be reached at bamaral@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @bamaral44. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
