Rewarding Negligence
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Calling 911 isn’t supposed to get you killed, but that’s exactly what happened in Pflugerville, Texas. Allegiance Mobile Health, the ambulance company responsible, didn’t even get investigated by the city!
No, instead they got A NEW CONTRACT AND A RAISE! Instead of rewarding such negligence, city officials should be explaining to taxpayers what we found in their response time records…
“He was always very silly with me. But sweet and very kind,” said Lynn Samerigo.
Lynn Samerigo’s husband should still be enjoying life with his wife and two kids.
“We were married for 20 years,” Samerigo said.
Lynn is facially blind. Her husband was her everything.
“I can’t remember any day that he didn’t give me like a kiss on the forehead or something like that,” Samerigo said.
John was only forty-two years old when he died in January last year.
And his death is being blamed on a paramedic who worked for Allegiance Mobile Health.
They provide ambulance service here in Pflugerville just north of Austin.
“The city of Pflugerville hired Allegiance Mobile Health to provide ambulance services in the area. Perkins says his crews have run into problems with allegiance paramedics out in the field.”
“John was putting together a car seat for our youngest and as he was putting it together. That’s whenever he got really dizzy and fell,” Samerigo said.
Samerigo did what we all would do, she called for help.
“He was unresponsive. I was already upstairs, and my eldest came up and told me that his dad wasn’t moving. I came downstairs and I called 911,” Samerigo said.
But she didn’t like the way the Allegiance ambulance crew dealt with her husband when they got there.
“The way that they treated him because he had bad teeth. They assumed that he was on drugs. At least based off of the questions that they were giving me. And they did not listen to me,” Samerigo said.
We now know from this state investigation that a paramedic named Hiram Ortega botched the rescue, putting in a breathing tube after sedating John Samerigo.
The autopsy report said he died from improper emergency medical therapy.
“Allegiance paramedics responded to a call where a man hit his head and needed medical care. The man later died. The autopsy report found further investigation revealed the series of steps taken by the primary medic led to his death.”
We also know from another document created by firefighters with ESD2 that just a week earlier they had witnessed that same Allegiance paramedic trying to improperly sedate another patient who was having a diabetic seizure.
Luckily he didn’t die.
The state took away Ortega’s license and there is an ongoing criminal investigation.
“Somebody died on your watch back in January and this may all go back to training again. It concerns me quite a bit.”
But we can’t find any evidence the city of Pflugerville ever bothered to do its own investigation of John Samerigo’s death or the training of allegiance paramedics.
Instead, they gave Allegiance a new four-year contract this May with a raise.
Lynn couldn’t believe that happened.
“The reason why my husband died is because it’s a systemic issue. Hiring a private ambulance company that does not meet the same standards as the one that was originally used by the city, is part of the reason why my husband died.”
A few months after Samerigo’s death, a representative from the ambulance company appeared before Pflugerville’s city council.
“I cannot comment on that incident,” said Amanda Baum.
We’ve been investigating ambulance companies all over Texas, beginning in Port Arthur.
Exposing Acadian Ambulance for falsifying their response time records in Port Arthur.
And this comment at a Pflugerville city council meeting caught our attention.
“Our average response time is 6 mins 45 seconds.”
The Allegiance contract requires they arrive in less than 7 minutes and 59 seconds to 90 percent of their calls.
But Allegiance’s own records show they have been violating the contract.
We looked at their own records from march of this year. Their average was more than nine minutes.
And it wasn’t a fluke. The records show they haven’t met the response time requirements, and the director of the city’s emergency services knows it.
“That doesn’t meet the 8 minutes, right?” asked Brian Collister.
“That’s correct, it does not. It does not meet the metric of the 90 percent for all calls,” said EMS Director Joseph Chacon.
But the city never punished Allegiance for violating the contract they agreed to.
“They came back and said, hey, if you want us to hit that metric at that consistency of a level, then we’re going to need more ambulances,” Chacon said.
Last May, the majority of the city council approved extending Allegiance’s contract instead of going back to using paramedics from ESD 2, which still provides ambulance service for the areas around Pflugerville.
Allegiance was cheaper. There were warnings.
“I am concerned that the service provided by Allegiance is subpar,” Mayor Victor Gonzales said.
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