Flagpole published an article (written by APN’s editor!) on Dec. 4 about untrue statements by National EMS, our for-profit ambulance provider in Athens. It was discussed by Alexia Ridley, Blake Aued, Gwen O’Looney, Fred Smith and Lee Shearer on Athens News Matters on Friday:

National EMS segment starts at 11:29.

In short, National EMS failed to respond to a child having a severe allergic reaction at Barrow Elementary in August. The school dialed 911, but the ambulance never arrived. After 15 minutes, the parents took the child to the hospital themselves.

It’s still unclear why the ambulance was unable to respond in a timely manner, but it was investigated by National EMS themselves, at the direction of the EMS Oversight Committee. The results of National’s investigation were presented back to the committee and also to the local government, but the report had one big problem: nearly all of it was false.

For example, National EMS said that the Barrow Elementary 911 call did not exist. They said that the school nurse never actually dialed 911, because some CCSD phones are incompatible with our 911 system. All of these statements turned out to be untrue. Why would National EMS say such things, when they are so easily proven false?

It’s possible they attempted a cover-up to mask the truth about their overall performance, which, according to public safety advocates Sam Rafal and Bob Gadd, is dismal. You can read the full story here.

APN has covered National EMS before, you can watch that video here:

You can also watch APN’s full interview with Rafal and Gadd: